To date, studies of $\textit{Laplace Surface}$ dynamics have concerned themselves with test particle orbits of fixed shape and orientation in the combined field of an oblate central body (to which the particle is bound) and a distant, inclined, companion which is captured to quadrupolar order. While amply sufficient for satellites around planets on near-circular orbits, the quadrupolar approximation fails to capture essential dynamical features induced by a wide binary companion (be it a star, a planet or a black hole) on a fairly eccentric orbit. With similar such astronomical settings in mind, we extend the classical Laplace framework to higher multipoles, and map out the backbone of stationary orbits, now complexified by the broken axial symmetry. Eccentric and inclined Laplace equilibria, which had been presaged in systems of large enough mutual inclination, are here delineated over a broad range of mutually inclined perturbations. We recover them for test particles in the field of a hot Jupiter and a wide eccentric stellar binary, highlighting their relevance for the architecture of multi-planet systems in binaries. We then extend and deploy our machinery closer to home, as we consider the secular dynamics of Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) in the presence of a putative ninth planet. We show how generalized Laplace equilibria seed islands for Trans-Neptunian objects to be sheltered around, islands within chaotic seas which we capture via Poincar$é$ sections, while highlighting a beautiful interplay between Laplace and Kozai-Lidov secular dynamical structures. An eminently classical tale revived for the exo-planetary 21st century!
In this work, we used N-body simulations and a radiative transfer package to model the evolution of eccentric debris discs produced by giant impacts between planetary embryos. This included how the morphology and infrared emission of these discs varied with embryo eccentricity and collision true anomaly. We found that eccentric discs inherit the eccentric properties of the centre of mass orbit of the two colliding embryos. However, the orientation of the collision with the respect to this orbit plays a key role in determining how closely the disc material resembles the centre of mass orbit. Ad…
In recent years, a number of eccentric debris belts have been observed in extrasolar systems. The most common explanation for their shape is the presence of a nearby eccentric planetary companion. The gravitational perturbation from such a companion would induce periodic eccentricity variations on the planetesimals in the belt, with a range of precession frequencies. The overall expected shape is an eccentric belt with a finite minimum width. However, several observed eccentric debris discs have been found to exhibit a narrower width than the theoretical expectation. In this paper, we study tw…
Context: Since circumstellar dust in debris disks is short-lived, dust-replenishing requires the presence of a reservoir of planetesimals. These planetesimals in the parent belt of debris disks orbit their host star and continuously supply the disk with fine dust through their mutual collisions. Aims: We aim to understand effects of different collisional parameters on the observational appearance of eccentric debris disks. Methods: The collisional evolution of selected debris disk configurations was simulated with the numerical code ACE. Subsequently, selected observable quantities are simulat…
We investigate the interaction between an eccentric planet and a less massive external debris disc. This scenario could occur after planet-planet scattering or merging events. We characterise the evolution over a wide range of initial conditions, using a suite of n-body integrations combined with theory. Planets near the disc mid-plane remove the inner debris region, and surviving particles form an eccentric disc apsidally aligned with the planet. The inner disc edge is elliptical and lies just beyond the planet's orbit. Moderately inclined planets ($i_{\rm plt} \gtrsim 20^\circ$ for $e_{\rm p…
The star Fomalhaut hosts a narrow, eccentric debris disc, plus a highly eccentric companion Fomalhaut b. It is often argued that Fomalhaut b cannot have significant mass, otherwise it would quickly perturb the disc. We show that material in internal mean-motion resonances with a massive, coplanar Fomalhaut b would actually be long-term stable, and occupy orbits similar to the observed debris. Furthermore, millimetre dust released in collisions between resonant bodies could reproduce the width, shape and orientation of the observed disc. We first re-examine the possible orbits of Fomalhaut b, a…
Debris disks often take the form of eccentric rings with azimuthal asymmetries in surface brightness. Such disks are often described as showing "pericenter glow", an enhancement of the disk brightness in regions nearest the central star. At long wavelengths, however, the disk apocenters should appear brighter than their pericenters: in the long wavelength limit, we find the apocenter/pericenter flux ratio scales as 1+e for disk eccentricity e. We produce new models of this "apocenter glow" to explore its causes and wavelength dependence and study its potential as a probe of dust grain properti…
"Debris disks" around young stars (analogues of the Kuiper Belt in our Solar System) show a variety of non-trivial structures attributed to planetary perturbations and used to constrain the properties of the planets. However, these analyses have largely ignored the fact that some debris disks are found to contain small quantities of gas, a component that all such disks should contain at some level. Several debris disks have been measured with a dust-to-gas ratio around unity at which the effect of hydrodynamics on the structure of the disk cannot be ignored. Here we report linear and nonlinear…
Imaging of debris disks has found evidence for both eccentric and offset disks. One hypothesis is that these provide evidence for massive perturbers that sculpt the observed structures. One such disk was recently observed in the far-IR by the Herschel Space Observatory around $ζ^2$ Ret. In contrast with previously reported systems, the disk is significantly eccentric, and the system is Gyr-old. We aim to investigate the long-term evolution of eccentric structures in debris disks caused by a perturber on an eccentric orbit. Both analytical predictions and numerical N-body simulations are used t…
Many debris disks seen in scattered light have shapes that imply their dust grains trace highly eccentric, apsidally aligned orbits. Apsidal alignment is surprising, especially for dust. Even when born from an apse-aligned ring of parent bodies, dust grains have their periastra dispersed in all directions by stellar radiation pressure. The periastra cannot be re-oriented by planets within the short dust lifetimes at the bottom of the collisional cascade. We propose that what re-aligns dust orbits is drag exerted by second-generation gas. Gas is largely immune to radiation pressure, and when re…
We investigate the general interaction between an eccentric planet and a coplanar debris disc of the same mass, using analytical theory and n-body simulations. Such an interaction could result from a planet-planet scattering or merging event. We show that when the planet mass is comparable to that of the disc, the former is often circularised with little change to its semimajor axis. The secular effect of such a planet can cause debris to apsidally anti-align with the planet's orbit (the opposite of what may be naively expected), leading to the counter-intuitive result that a low-mass planet m…
Debris disks should not be completely gas-free, since there is second generation gas from outgassing of planetesimals and dust grains via sublimation, photodesorption, or collisions, generating a system of dust-to-gas ratio close to unity, where hydrodynamics cannot be ignored. A clumping instability exists in this configuration, that has been hitherto explored only in one-dimensional, incompressible models. We performed 2D numerical compressible models of a disk with comparable amounts of gas and dust to study the growth and development of this instability. Our model solves the momentum equat…
This paper shows that the eccentric debris rings seen around the stars Fomalhaut and HD 202628 are narrower than expected in the standard eccentric planet perturbation scenario (sometimes referred to as "pericenter glow"). The standard scenario posits an initially circular and narrow belt of planetesimals at semi-major axis $a$, whose eccentricity is increased to $e_f$ after the gas disc has dispersed by secular perturbations from an eccentric planet, resulting in a belt of width $2ae_f$. In a minor modification of this scenario, narrower belts can arise if the planetesimals are initially ecce…
Structures observed in debris disks may be caused by gravitational interaction with planetary or stellar companions. These perturbed disks are often thought to indicate the presence of planets and offer insights into the properties of both the disk and the perturbing planets. Gaps in debris disks may indicate a planet physically present within the gap, but such gaps can also occur away from the planet's orbit at mean-motion resonances (MMRs), and this is the focus of our interest here. We extend our study of planet-disk interaction through MMRs, presented in an earlier paper, to systems in whi…
The location of surface brightness maxima (e.g. apocentre and pericentre glow) in eccentric debris discs are often used to infer the underlying orbits of the dust and planetesimals that comprise the disc. However, there is a misconception that eccentric discs have higher surface densities at apocentre and thus necessarily exhibit apocentre glow at long wavelengths. This arises from the expectation that the slower velocities at apocentre lead to a "pile up'" of dust, which fails to account for the greater area over which dust is spread at apocentre. Instead we show with theory and by modelling …
The orbit of a planet is surrounded by a chaotic zone wherein nearby particles' orbits are chaotic and unstable. Wisdom (1980) showed that the chaos is driven by the overlap of mean motion resonances which occurs within a distance (da/a)_chaos = 1.3 mu^2/7 of the planet's orbit. However, the width of mean motion resonances grows with the particles' eccentricity, which will increase the width of the chaotic zone at higher eccentricities. Here we investigate the width of the chaotic zone using the iterated encounter map and N-body integrations. We find that the classical prescription works well …
Being the first of its kind, the white dwarf WD 1145+017 exhibits a complex system of disintegrating debris which offers a unique opportunity to study its disruption process in real time. Even with plenty of transit observations there are no clear constraints on the masses or eccentricities of such debris. Using $N$-body simulations we show that masses greater than approximately $10^{20}$ kg (a tenth of the mass of Ceres) or orbits that are not nearly circular ($\mathrm{eccentricity}>10^{-3}$) dramatically increase the chances of the system becoming unstable within two years, which would contr…
The first indication of the presence of a circumstellar debris disk is usually the detection of excess infrared emission from the population of small dust grains orbiting the star. This dust is short-lived, requiring continual replenishment, and indicating that the disk must be excited by an unseen perturber. Previous theoretical studies have demonstrated that an eccentric planet orbiting interior to the disk will stir the larger bodies in the belt and produce dust via interparticle collisions. However, motivated by recent observations, we explore another possible mechanism for heating a debri…
We present the Superparticle Model/Algorithm for Collisions in Kuiper belts and debris disks (SMACK), a new method for simultaneously modeling, in 3-D, the collisional and dynamical evolution of planetesimals in a debris disk with planets. SMACK can simulate azimuthal asymmetries and how these asymmetries evolve over time. We show that SMACK is stable to numerical viscosity and numerical heating over 10^7 yr, and that it can reproduce analytic models of disk evolution. We use SMACK to model the evolution of a debris ring containing a planet on an eccentric orbit. Differential precession create…
Context: High-resolution images of circumstellar debris discs reveal off-centred rings that indicate past or ongoing perturbation, possibly caused by secular gravitational interaction with unseen stellar or substellar companions. The purely dynamical aspects of this departure from radial symmetry are well understood. However, the observed dust is subject to additional forces and effects, most notably collisions and drag. Aims: To complement the studies of dynamics, we therefore aim to understand how new asymmetries are created by the addition of collisional evolution and drag forces, and exist…
We present ALMA 1.3 mm observations of the HD~53143 debris disk - the first infrared or millimeter image produced of this ~1 Gyr-old solar-analogue. Previous HST STIS coronagraphic imaging did not detect flux along the minor axis of the disk which could suggest a face-on geometry with two 'clumps' of dust. These ALMA observations reveal a disk with a strikingly different structure. In order to fit models to the millimeter visibilities and constrain the uncertainties on the disk parameters, we adopt an MCMC approach. This is the most eccentric debris disk observed to date with a forced eccentri…
The formation channel of the tens of compact debris discs which orbit white dwarfs (WDs) at a distance of one Solar radius remains unknown. Asteroids that survive the giant branch stellar phases beyond a few au are assumed to be dynamically thrust towards the WD and tidally disrupted within its Roche radius, generating extremely eccentric (e>0.98) rings. Here, we establish that WD radiation compresses and circularizes the orbits of super-micron to cm-sized ring constituents to entirely within the WD's Roche radius. We derive a closed algebraic formula which well-approximates the shrinking time…
HD106906 is a planetary system that hosts a wide-orbit companion, as well as an eccentric and flat debris disk, which hold important constraints on its formation and subsequent evolution. The recent observations of the companion constrain its orbit to be eccentric and inclined relative to the plane of the debris disk. Here, we show that, in the presence of the inclined companion, the debris disk quickly ($\lesssim5$ Myr) becomes warped and puffy. This suggests that the current configuration of the system is relatively recent. We explore the possibility that a recent close encounter with a free…
Resolved observations of debris discs can be used to derive radial profiles of Azimuthally-averaged Surface Density (ASD), which carries important information about the disc structure even in presence of non-axisymmetric features and has improved signal-to-noise characteristics. We develop a (semi-)analytical formalism allowing one to relate ASD to the underlying semi-major axis and eccentricity distributions of the debris particles in a straightforward manner. This approach does not involve the distribution of particle apsidal angles, thus simplifying calculations. It is a much faster, more f…
We investigate the evolution on secular time-scales of a radially extended debris disc under the influence of a system of two coplanar planets interior to the disc, showing that the secular resonances of the system can produce a depleted region in the disc by exciting the eccentricities of planetesimals. Using Laplace-Lagrange theory, we consider how the two exterior secular resonance locations, time-scales and widths depend on the masses, semi-major axes and eccentricities of the planets. In particular, we find that unless the resonances are very close to each other, one of them is very narro…
A "minimum model" for debris disks consists of a narrow ring of parent bodies, secularly forced by a single planet on a possibly eccentric orbit, colliding to produce dust grains that are perturbed by stellar radiation pressure. We demonstrate how this minimum model can reproduce a wide variety of disk morphologies imaged in scattered starlight. Five broad categories of disk shape can be captured: "rings," "needles," "ships-and-wakes," "bars," and "moths (a.k.a. fans)," depending on the viewing geometry. Moths can also sport "double wings." We explain the origin of morphological features from …
We study mass transfers between debris discs during stellar encounters. We carried out numerical simulations of close flybys of two stars, one of which has a disc of planetesimals represented by test particles. We explored the parameter space of the encounters, varying the mass ratio of the two stars, their pericentre and eccentricity of the encounter, and its geometry. We find that particles are transferred to the other star from a restricted radial range in the disc and the limiting radii of this transfer region depend on the parameters of the encounter. We derive an approximate analytic des…
We present here new observations of the eccentric debris ring surrounding the Gyr-old solar-type star HD 202628: at millimeter wavelengths with ALMA, at far-infrared wavelengths with \textit{Herschel}, and in scattered light with \textit{HST}. The ring inner edge is found to be consistent between ALMA and \textit{HST} data. As radiation pressure affects small grains seen in scattered-light, the ring appears broader at optical than at millimeter wavelengths. The best fit to the ring seen with ALMA has inner and outer edges at $143.1 \pm 1.7$ AU and $165.5 \pm 1.4$, respectively, and an inclinat…
An Inclined, Eccentric Planet and an Inner Debris Disk Could Reproduce AU Mic Structure
University of Exeter（埃克塞特大学）；University of California Santa Cruz（加州大学圣克鲁兹分校）；John Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学）；University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校）
Planetesimal belts are invoked to explain the prolonged existence of debris disks. Important parameters to model their collisional evolution and to compute the dust production rate are the intrinsic probability of collision $P_i$ and the mean impact velocity $U_c$. If a planet orbits close to the belt, the values of both these parameters are affected by its secular perturbations yielding a strong correlation between eccentricity $e$ and pericentre longitude $\varpi$. We adopt a new algorithm to compute both $P_i$ and $U_c$ in presence of various levels of secular correlation due to different r…
Around 16% of the solar-like stars in our neighbourhood show IR-excesses due to debris discs and a fraction of them are known to host planets. We aim to determine in a homogeneous way the metallicity of a sample of stars with known debris discs and planets. Our analysis includes the calculation of the fundamental stellar parameters by applying the iron ionisation equilibrium conditions to several isolated Fe I and Fe II lines. The metallicity distributions of the different stellar samples suggest that there is a transition toward higher metallicities from stars with neither debris discs nor pl…
25%-50% of all white dwarfs (WDs) host observable and dynamically active remnant planetary systems based on the presence of close-in circumstellar dust and gas and photospheric metal pollution. Currently-accepted theoretical explanations for the origin of this matter include asteroids that survive the star's giant branch evolution at au-scale distances and are subsequently perturbed onto WD-grazing orbits following stellar mass loss. In this work we investigate the tidal disruption of these highly-eccentric (e > 0.98) asteroids as they approach and tidally disrupt around the WD. We analyticall…
How eccentric is the debris disk of epsilon Eridani? ALMA reveals a near-circular belt
School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin（都柏林三一学院物理学院，都柏林大学）；Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian（哈佛-史密森尼天体物理中心）；Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学天文系和斯图尔德天文台）；UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory Edinburgh（英国天文学技术中心，爱丁堡皇家天文台）
本研究利用 ALMA 观测重新分析 ε Eridani 碎片盘，发现其外带近乎圆形且动力学冷，并约束了额外行星的质量与轨道范围。
Debris disc analysis and modelling provide crucial information about the structure and the processes at play in extrasolar planetary systems. In binary systems, this issue is more complex because the disc should in addition respond to the companion star's perturbations. We explore the dynamical evolution of a collisionally active debris disc for different initial parent body populations, diverse binary configurations and optical depths. We focus on the radial extent and size distribution of the disc at a stationary state. We numerically follow the evolution of $10^{5}$ massless small grains, i…
Spectroscopic observations of some metal-rich white dwarfs (WDs), believed to be polluted by planetary material, reveal the presence of compact gaseous metallic disks orbiting them. The observed variability of asymmetric, double-peaked emission line profiles in about half of such systems could be interpreted as the signature of precession of an eccentric gaseous debris disk. The variability timescales --- from decades down to $1.4$ yr (recently inferred for the debris disk around HE 1349--2305) --- are in rough agreement with the rate of general relativistic (GR) precession in the test particl…
We present time-series spectra revealing changes in the circumstellar line profiles for the white dwarf WD 1145+017. Over the course of 2.2 years, the spectra show complete velocity reversals in the circumstellar absorption, moving from strongly red-shifted in 2015 April to strongly blue-shifted in 2017 June. The depth of the absorption also varies, increasing by a factor of two over the same period. The dramatic changes in the line profiles are consistent with eccentric circumstellar gas rings undergoing general relativistic precession. As the argument of periapsis of the rings change relativ…
The eccentricity distribution of exoplanets is known from radial velocity surveys to be divergent from circular orbits beyond 0.1 AU. This is particularly the case for large planets where the radial velocity technique is most sensitive. The eccentricity of planetary orbits can have a large effect on the transit probability and subsequently the planet yield of transit surveys. The Kepler mission is the first transit survey that probes deep enough into period-space to allow this effect to be seen via the variation in transit durations. We use the Kepler planet candidates to show that the eccentr…
The detection of exoplanets through direct imaging has produced numerous new positive identifications in recent years. The technique is biased towards planets at wide separations due to the difficulty in removing the stellar signature at small angular separations. Planets in eccentric orbits will thus move in and out of the detectable region around a star as a function of time. Here we use the known diversity of orbital eccentricities to determine the range of orbits which may lie beneath the detection threshold of current surveys. We quantify the percentage of the orbit which yields a detecta…
The planet candidate Fomalhaut b is bright in optical light but undetected in longer wavelengths, requiring a large, reflective dust cloud. The most recent observations find an extremely eccentric orbit (e ~ 0.8), indicating that Fomalhaut b cannot be the planet that is constraining the system's eccentric debris ring. An irregular satellite swarm around a super-Earth has been proposed, however, explaining the well-constrained debris ring requires an additional planet on an orbit that crosses that of the putative super-Earth. This paper expands upon a second theory: Fomalhaut b is a transient d…
Extended gaps in the debris disks of both Vega and Fomalhaut have been observed. These structures have been attributed to tidal perturbations by multiple super-Jupiter gas giant planets. Within the current observational limits, however, no such massive planets have been detected. Here we propose a less stringent `lone-planet' scenario to account for the observed structure with a single eccentric gas giant and suggest that clearing of these wide gaps is induced by its sweeping secular resonance. During the depletion of the disk gas, the planet's secular resonance propagates inward and clears a …
Planet--planet scattering is a major dynamical mechanism able to significantly alter the architecture of a planetary system. In addition to that, it may also affect the formation and retention of a debris disk by the system. A violent chaotic evolution of the planets can easily clear leftover planetesimal belts preventing the ignition of a substantial collisional cascade that can give origin to a debris disk. On the other end, a mild evolution with limited steps in eccentricity and semimajor axis can trigger the formation of a debris disk by stirring an initially quiet planetesimal belt. The v…
A large number of systems harboring a debris disk show evidence for a double belt architecture. One hypothesis for explaining the gap between the belts is the presence of one or more planets dynamically carving it. This work aims to investigate this scenario in systems harboring two components debris disks. All the targets in the sample were observed with the SPHERE instrument which performs high-contrast direct imaging. Positions of the inner and outer belts were estimated by SED fitting of the infrared excesses or, when available, from resolved images of the disk. Very few planets have been …
Resolved debris disc images can exhibit a range of radial and azimuthal structures, including gaps and rings, which can result from planetary companions shaping the disc by their gravitational influence. Currently there are no tools available to determine the architecture of potential companions from disc observations. Recent work by Rodigas et al. (2014) presents how one can estimate the maximum mass and minimum semi major axis of a hidden planet empirically from the width of the disc in scattered light. In this work, we use the predictions of Rodigas et al. applied to two debris discs HD 202…
The SEDs of some nearby stars show mid-infrared excesses from warm habitable zone dust, known as exozodiacal dust. This dust may originate in collisions in a planetesimal belt before being dragged inwards. This paper presents an analytical model for the size distribution of particles at different radial locations in such a scenario, considering evolution due to destructive collisions and Poynting-Robertson (P-R) drag. Results from more accurate but computationally expensive numerical simulations of this process are used to validate the model and fit its free parameters. The model predicts 11 $…
We present a time-dependent radiative model for the atmosphere of extrasolar planets that takes into account the eccentricity of their orbit. In addition to the modulation of stellar irradiation by the varying planet-star distance, the pseudo-synchronous rotation of the planets may play a significant role. We include both of these time-dependent effects when modeling the planetary thermal structure. We investigate the thermal structure, and spectral characteristics for time-dependent stellar heating for two highly eccentric planets. Finally, we discuss observational aspects for those planets s…
We present HST ultraviolet spectroscopy of the white dwarfs PG0843+516, PG1015+161, SDSS1228+1040, and GALEX1931+0117, which accrete circumstellar planetary debris formed from the destruction of asteroids. Combined with optical data, a minimum of five and a maximum of eleven different metals are detected in their photospheres. With metal sinking time scales of only a few days, these stars are in accretion/diffusion equilibrium, and the photospheric abundances closely reflect those of the circumstellar material. We find C/Si ratios that are consistent with that of the bulk Earth, corroborating …
Thermal light-curve analysis is a powerful approach to probe the thermal structures of exoplanetary atmospheres, which are greatly influenced by the planetary obliquity and eccentricity. Here we investigate the thermal light curves of eccentric-tilted exoplanets across various radiative timescales, eccentricities, obliquities, and viewing geometries using results of shallow-water simulations presented in Ohno $\&$ Zhang (2019). We also achieve an analytical theory of the thermal light curve that can explain general trends in the light curves of tilted exoplanets. For tilted planets in circular…
We apply our 3D debris disk model, SMACK, to simulate a planet on a circular orbit near a ring of planetesimals that are experiencing destructive collisions. Previous simulations of a planet opening a gap in a collisionless debris disk have found that the width of the gap scales as the planet mass to the 2/7th power ($α$=2/7). We find that the gap sizes in a collisional disk still obey a power law scaling with planet mass, but that the index alpha of the power law depends on the age of the system t relative to the collisional timescale $t_{coll}$ of the disk by $α= 0.32(t/t_{coll})^{-0.04}$, w…
The optically and IR bright, and starlight-scattering, HR 4796A ring-like debris disk is one of the most (and best) studied exoplanetary debris systems. The presence of a yet-undetected planet has been inferred (or suggested) from the narrow width and inner/outer truncation radii of its r = 1.05" (77 au) debris ring. We present new, highly sensitive, Hubble Space Telescope (HST) visible-light images of the HR 4796A circumstellar debris system and its environment over a very wide range of stellocentric angles from 0.32" (23 au) to ~ 15" (1100 au). These very high contrast images were obtained w…
Circumstellar debris disks are the extrasolar analogues of the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. They consist of comets and leftover planetesimals that continuously collide and produce circumstellar dust that can be observed as infrared excess or in resolved imaging. As an obvious outcome of the planet formation process, debris disks can help us constrain planet formation theories and learn about the history of our own solar system. This thesis presents observational studies of secondary gas in debris disks. It also discusses the astrobiological potential of debris disks created during impact…
Spatially resolved images of debris disks frequently reveal complex morphologies such as gaps, spirals, and warps. Most existing models for explaining such morphologies focus on the role of massive perturbers (i.e. planets, stellar companions), ignoring the gravitational effects of the disk itself. Here we investigate the secular interaction between an eccentric planet and a massive, external debris disk using a simple analytical model. Our framework accounts for both the gravitational coupling between the disk and the planet, as well as the disk self-gravity -- with the limitation that it ign…
Observations of debris disks allow for the study of planetary systems, even where planets have not been detected. However, debris disks are often only characterized by unresolved infrared excesses that resemble featureless blackbodies, and the location of the emitting dust is uncertain due to a degeneracy with the dust grain properties. Here we characterize the Spitzer IRS spectra of 22 debris disks exhibiting 10 micron silicate emission features. Such features arise from small warm dust grains, and their presence can significantly constrain the orbital location of the emitting debris. We find…
The eccentric orbits of the known extrasolar giant planets provide evidence that most planet-forming environments undergo violent dynamical instabilities. Here, we numerically simulate the impact of giant planet instabilities on planetary systems as a whole. We find that populations of inner rocky and outer icy bodies are both shaped by the giant planet dynamics and are naturally correlated. Strong instabilities -- those with very eccentric surviving giant planets -- completely clear out their inner and outer regions. In contrast, systems with stable or low-mass giant planets form terrestrial …
