Dynamical Heating Induced by Dwarf Planets on Cold Kuiper Belt–like Debris Disks

Abstract

With the use of long-term numerical simulations, we study the evolution and orbital behavior of cometary nuclei in cold Kuiper belt-like debris disks under the gravitational influence of dwarf planets (DPs); we carry out these simulations with and without the presence of a Neptune-like giant planet. This exploratory study shows that in the absence of a giant planet, 10 DPs are enough to induce strong radial and vertical heating on the orbits of belt particles. On the other hand, the presence of a giant planet close to the debris disk, acts as a stability agent reducing the radial and vertical heating. With enough DPs, even in the presence of a Neptune-like giant planet some radial heating remains; this heating grows steadily, re-filling resonances otherwise empty of cometary nuclei. Specifically for the solar system, this secular process seems to be able to provide material that, through resonant chaotic diffusion, increase the rate of new comets spiraling into the inner planetary system, but only if more than the ∼ 10 known DP sized objects exist in the trans-Neptunian region.Subject headings: planets and satellites: dynamical evolution and stability -Kuiper belt: generalmethods: numerical

Giant Planets Can Act as Stabilizing Agents on Debris Disks

“…Indeed, the values reached by e and i at the end of the simulation, owing just to the DPs' influence are e ∼ 0.07 and i ∼ 3.3 o , while, when the giant planet is included, the maximum values reached are e ∼ 0.045 and i ∼ 1.8 o , for the 3 different dMD indexes. This effect was previously pointed out by Muñoz-Gutiérrez et al (2015), noting that an interior giant planet of small eccentricity, seems to stabilize the orbits of debris disk particles, preventing an important stirring produced by DPs. Later on, we will discuss the origin of this important phenomenon.…”

“…A nearby example is the case of the Kuiper belt that shows evidence of sculpting due to the migration of Neptune (Chiang et al 2007;Morbidelli et al 2008;Nesvorný 2015); all these works consider the giant planet as an orbital "disorderer" agent. In this work we are quantifying an effect presented in Muñoz-Gutiérrez et al (2015); specifically we demonstrate that giant planets, depending on the total mass of a given debris disk, can also act as a stabilizing mechanism on the cometary nucleii, and it can quench the dynamical evaporation induced by the presence of DPs on debris disks . This paper is organized as follows: in Section 2 we provide the details of the numerical simulations we performed; we also describe the distributions of DPs, the debris disk and the giant planet used in this work.…”

“…• in each, X and Y axes (see the description in Muñoz-Gutiérrez et al 2015); this translates to an average inclination of µ i = 1.47…”

“…From the experiments performed in Muñoz-Gutiérrez et al (2015) we consider that 50 scatterers are adequate to fulfill both requirements. The 50 DPs we use represent the 50 largest DPs in such debris disk.…”

“…In Muñoz-Gutiérrez et al (2015), we had speculated about the maximum average inclination reached by the disk particles in our simulations as a function of the maximum initial inclination of the DP distributions. In Fig.…”