Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21560612h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #606.12; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 36, p.1131
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
A simple and fast model for a circumstellar debris disk has been developed. These disks are of considerable interest because they may be sites of ongoing planet formation. Collisions among unseen planetesimals are thought to be the source of these small dust grains, which upon their creation are launched into very wide orbits due to stellar radiation pressure (Strubbe and Chiang 2006). Collisions among dust grains also depletes the disk of its dust. However inspecting all pairs of intersecting dust orbits allows one to assess the collision probabilities, which then leads to a rate equation that accounts for dust production by unseen planetesimals minus losses due to collisions. This results in a system of coupled nonlinear differential equations, with one equation for the dust in each size bin, that is easily solved numerically for the dust abundance over time. The model's principal parameters are the dust production rate, and nature of the source planetesimals, namely, whether they reside in a narrow ring or a broad disk. The model is also sensitive to whether the planetesimal disk experiences `inside-out' erosion, with dust production being more rapid in the inner part of the planetesimal disk, versus `outside-in' erosion. The simulated disks' surface brightness are then compared to HST observations of beta Pictoris (acquired by Golimowski et al 2006), as well as the solar analog HD 107146 (by Ardila et al 2004, 2005). Preliminary results indicate that, for both systems, the source planetesimals reside in a broad disk, and that the planetesimal erosion there is `outside-in', with dust production being more vigorous in the outer parts of the planetesimal disk. Lastly, the inferred dust production rates are prodigious, possibly resulting in the loss of tens of earth-masses during the life of the planetesimal disk, due to collisional grinding and blowout by radiation pressure.
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