Linking the formation and fate of exo-Kuiper belts within Solar system analogues

Veras, Dimitri; Reichert, Katja; Dotti, Francesco Flammini; Cai, Maxwell X.; Mustill, Alexander J.; Shannon, Andrew; McDonald, Catriona; Zwart, Simon Portegies; Kouwenhoven, M. B. N.; Spurzem, Rainer

doi:10.1093/mnras/staa559

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 248 publications

(266 reference statements)

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“…Note that also very low-mass particles, such as planetesimals (asteroids and Kuiper belt objects) or comets (Oort cloud objects) are subject to these encounters (see e.g. Veras et al 2020). A characterization of the importance of such close encounters on planetary systems with debris discs is presented in Portegies Zwart & Jílková (2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the survival of resonant and non-resonant planetary systems in star clusters

Stock

Cai

Spurzem

et al. 2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Despite the discovery of thousands of exoplanets in recent years, the number of known exoplanets in star clusters remains tiny. This may be a consequence of close stellar encounters perturbing the dynamical evolution of planetary systems in these clusters. Here, we present the results from direct N-body simulations of multi-planetary systems embedded in star clusters containing N = 8k, 16k, 32k, and 64k stars. The planetary systems, which consist of the four Solar System giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, are initialised in different orbital configurations, to study the effect of the system architecture on the dynamical evolution of the entire planetary system, and on the escape rate of the individual planets. We find that the current orbital parameters of the Solar System giants (with initially circular orbits, as well as with present-day eccentricities) and a slightly more compact configuration, have a high resilience against stellar perturbations. A configuration with initial mean-motion resonances of 3:2, 3:2, and 5:4 between the planets, which is inspired by the Nice model, and for which the two outermost planets are usually ejected within the first 105 years, is in many cases stabilized due to the removal of the resonances by external stellar perturbation and by the rapid ejection of at least one planet. Assigning all planets the same mass of 1 MJup almost equalizes the survival fractions. Our simulations reproduce the broad diversity amongst observed exoplanet systems. We find not only many very wide and/or eccentric orbits, but also a significant number of (stable) retrograde orbits.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the survival of resonant and non-resonant planetary systems in star clusters

Stock

Cai

Spurzem

et al. 2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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“…How an asteroid gets to close to the WD in the first place to be tidally disrupted is not modelled in this work. Among the other candidates (e.g., Kratter & Perets 2012;Petrovich & Muñoz 2017;Veras et al 2020), one is the perturbation by the planets in the same system (Bonsor et al 2011;Debes et al 2012;Frewen & Hansen 2014;Mustill et al 2018). After the disruption, except for some (if any) on hyperbolic orbits (Rafikov 2018), the fragments' orbits continue intersecting that of the perturber.…”

Section: Orbital Evolution Of the Fragmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accretion of tidally disrupted asteroids onto white dwarfs: direct accretion versus disk processing

Li,

Mustill,

Davies

2021

Preprint

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Atmospheric heavy elements have been observed in more than a quarter of white dwarfs (WDs) at different cooling ages, indicating ongoing accretion of asteroidal material, whilst only a few per cent of the WDs possess a dust disk, and all these WDs are accreting metals.Here, assuming that a rubble-pile asteroid is scattered inside a WD's Roche lobe by a planet, we study its tidal disruption and the long-term evolution of the resulting fragments. We find that after a few pericentric passages, the asteroid is shredded into its constituent particles, forming a flat, thin ring. On a timescale of Myr, tens of per cent of the particles are scattered onto the WD. Fragment mutual collisions are most effective for coplanar fragments, and are thus only important in 10 3 − 10 4 yr before the orbital coplanarity is broken by the planet. We show that for a rubble pile asteroid with a size frequency distribution of the component particles following that of the near earth objects, it has to be roughly at least 10 km in radius such that enough fragments are generated and ≥ 10% of its mass is lost to mutual collisions. At relative velocities of tens of km/s, such collisions grind down the tidal fragments into smaller and smaller dust grains. The WD radiation forces may shrink those grains' orbits, forming a dust disk. Tidal disruption of a monolithic asteroid creates large km-size fragments, and only parent bodies ≥ 100 km are able to generate enough fragments for mutual collisions to be significant.

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“…For the simulations presented in this section, the Solar System is initialized as a member of a star cluster (see also Torres et al 2020a;Stock et al 2020;Veras et al 2020). Two series of simulations were performed: one in which the Sun has four giant planets in a compact configuration, and the other that shows a more extended configuration (see Table 3).…”

Section: The Evolution Of the Solar System In Its Birth Clustermentioning

confidence: 99%

Oort cloud Ecology

Zwart

Torres

Cai

et al. 2021

A&A

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Jan Hendrik Oort hypothesized the existence of a distant cloud of cometary objects that orbit the Sun based on a spike in the reciprocal orbital separation at 1∕a ≲ 10−4 au−1. The Oort cloud is the source of long-period comets, but has not been observed directly, and its origin remains theoretical. Theories on its origin evoke a sequence of events that have been tested individually but never as a consistent chronology. We present a chronology of the formation and early evolution of the Oort cloud, and test the sequence of events by simulating the formation process in subsequent amalgamated steps. These simulations start with the Solar System being born with planets and asteroids in a stellar cluster orbiting the Galactic center. Upon ejection from its birth environment, we continue to follow the evolution of the Solar System while it navigates the Galaxy as an isolated planetary system. We conclude that the range in semi-major axis between ~100 au and several ~103 au still bears the signatures of the Sun being born in a ≳1000 M⊙ pc−3 star cluster, and that most of the outer Oort cloud formed after the Solar System was ejected. The ejection of the Solar System, we argue, happened between ~20 Myr and 50 Myr after its birth. Trailing and leading trails of asteroids and comets along the Sun’s orbit in the Galactic potential are the by-product of the formation of the Oort cloud. These arms are composed of material that became unbound from the Solar System when the Oort cloud formed. Today, the bulk of the material in the Oort cloud (~70%) originates from the region in the circumstellar disk that was located between ~15 au and ~35 au, near the current location of the ice giants and the Centaur family of asteroids. According to our simulations, this population is eradicated if the ice-giant planets are born in orbital resonance. Planet migration or chaotic orbital reorganization occurring while the Solar System is still a cluster member is, according to our model, inconsistent with the presence of the Oort cloud. About half the inner Oort cloud, between 100 and 104 au, and a quarter of the material in the outer Oort cloud, ≳104 au, could be non-native to the Solar System but was captured from free-floating debris in the cluster or from the circumstellar disks of other stars in the birth cluster. Characterizing this population will help us to reconstruct the history of the Solar System.

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Linking the formation and fate of exo-Kuiper belts within Solar system analogues

Cited by 16 publications

References 248 publications

On the survival of resonant and non-resonant planetary systems in star clusters

On the survival of resonant and non-resonant planetary systems in star clusters

Accretion of tidally disrupted asteroids onto white dwarfs: direct accretion versus disk processing

Oort cloud Ecology

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