Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Apr 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011dda....42.0905d&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #42, #9.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The Kuiper Belt is a rich collection of artifacts for Solar System archaeology. In the classical region, a population of "hot” objects with inclinations up to 30° overlies a flat "cold” population, with distinct physical properties (ex. size, color, binary fraction); a third population is in orbital resonance with Neptune. Migration, the standard explanation for capturing objects into resonance, preserves cold objects formed in situ but does not produce a hot population. Alternatively, Neptune may have undergone a high eccentricity period during which it scattered hot objects from the inner disk into the classical region, but this scenario does not produce a cold population. We investigate which histories produce both hot and cold objects by fully exploring the parameter space of Neptune's initial semi-major axis (a) and eccentricity (e), as well as migration, eccentricity damping, and precession timescales. Comparing the observed classicals with an (a,e) stability map (Lykakwa and Mukai 2005) reveals that hot objects exhibit the highest stable eccentricities while cold objects in a diagnostic region 42-44 AU are confined to e<0.05, significantly below the survival limit. We find Neptune's eccentricity must damp before the cold classicals reach high eccentricities through secular forcing. Particles near orbital resonances - widened by Neptune's large eccentricity - undergo faster secular evolution; thus resonance regions cannot overly the diagnostic region while Neptune's eccentricity is large. Finally, Neptune's apoapse must be large enough to allow hot objects to reach the region of long-term stability before Neptune's eccentricity damps. Thus an eccentric Neptune is restricted to two specific regions of (a,e) space before its eccentricity damps, which must happen on a timescale <0.3 Myr. However, if Neptune precesses sufficiently quickly (Batygin 2011, in prep), with a period <0.5 Myr, the forced eccentricity of the particles is small and the damping time can be arbitrarily long.
Dawson Rebekah Ilene
Murray-Clay Ruth
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