Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jul 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dda....38.0605d&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #38, #6.05
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Conservation of angular momentum dictates that the scattering of a planetesimal by a planet leads to a small recoil of the planet. For a planet immersed in a uniform disk of numerous, low-mass planetesimals, it might be thought that multiple scattering events would only lead to a small random walk in the planet's location. However, as suggested by Ida, Bryden, Lin & Tanaka (2000) and seen in the numerical simulations of Gomes, Morbidelli & Levison (2004), even a slight difference in the angular momentum transferred to outgoing versus ingoing planetesimals can under certain circumstances be amplified into a rapid, self-sustained planet migration through the disk.
We have embarked on a systematic study of planetesimal-driven migration using our N-body code SyMBA (Duncan, Levison and Lee 1998). We are focussing initially on the case of a single planet, parametrized by its mass and radius, immersed in a planetesimal disk which is parametrized by an initial power-law surface density distribution and a Rayleigh distributed eccentricity and inclination distribution with prescribed rms values. We typically use 10^4 to 10^6 equal-mass disk particles and include the gravitational force (and back-reaction) on each disk particle by the Sun and planet but neglect planetesimal-planetesimal interactions for this study.
Rapid planet migration is found in most of the cases studied to date. For example, an Earth-mass planet embedded near 20 AU in an initially low eccentricity minimum-mass planetesimal disk typically migrates about 1 AU every 20,000 years. Although both inward and outward migrations are seen, we find a surprising propensity for initially inward migration which may be related to a small inherent asymmetry in outward versus inward scattering.
We present a summary of the results to date and approximate scaling laws for a range of planetary masses, disk densities and power-law indices and planetesimal eccentricities.
Brasser Ramon
Duncan Martin J.
Kirsh David
Levison Hal
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