Collisional Growth of Planetesimals

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

Large planetesimals grow by accreting smaller bodies in a planetesimal disk. These bodies later become the parent population for producing dusty debris disks. Extrasolar debris disks, with dust luminosities a thousand times brighter than that of our Kuiper belt, and long decay timescales, are inferred to have masses in large planetesimals (>10 km) comparable to the minimum mass solar nebula (MMSN), or, 10^2 times the present day mass in the Kuiper belt. What leads to such a striking disparity between ours and the extra-solar disks? Past simulations of planetesimal growth have produced large planetesimals with low (< 10%) efficiency, and require MMSN to produce the observed Kuiper belt today. This low efficiency results because accretion is stalled by viscous stirring from the large bodies. This picture changes drastically in the presence of a large mass of cm-sized grains, which collisionally cool themselves.
We use numerical simulations to show that the Cold Classical Kuiper belt can arise from roughly its present day mass ( 1% MMSN), and that bright extrasolar debris disks are formed out of much more massive (roughly MMSN) disks.

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