Steeper Scattered Disks Buckle Faster

Autor: Alexander Zderic, Ann-Marie Madigan
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol 948, Iss 1, p L1 (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2041-8213
2041-8205
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/accde2
Popis: Disks of low-mass bodies scattered by giant planets to large semimajor axis and constant periapsis orbits are vulnerable to a buckling instability. This instability exponentially grows orbital inclinations, raises periapsis distances, and coherently tilts orbits resulting in clustering of arguments of periapsis. The dynamically hot system is then susceptible to the formation of a lopsided mode. Here we show that the timescale of the buckling instability decreases as the radial surface density of the population becomes more centrally dense, i.e., steeper scattered disks buckle faster. Accounting for differential apsidal precession driven by giant planets, we find that ∼10 M _⊕ is sufficient for a primordial scattered disk in the trans-Neptunian region to have been unstable if ${dN}\propto {a}^{-2.5}{da}$ .
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