Neptune’s Migration into a Stirred-Up Kuiper Belt: A Detailed Comparison of Simulations to Observations

By J. Hahn, R. Malhotra. 2005

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We use N-body simulations to examine the consequences of Neptune's outward migration into the Kuiper Belt, with the simulated end states being compared rigorously and quantitatively to the observations. These simulations confirm the 2003 findings of Chiang and coworkers, who showed that Neptune's migration into a previously stirred-up Kuiper Belt can account for the Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) known to librate at Neptune's 5 : 2 resonance. We also find that capture is possible at many other weak, high-order mean-motion resonances, such as 11 : 6, 13 : 7, 13 : 6, 9 : 4, 7 : 3, 12 : 5, 8 : 3, 3 : 1, 7 : 2, and 4 : 1. The more distant of these resonances, such as the 9 : 4, 7 : 3, 5 : 2, and 3 : 1, can also capture particles in stable, eccentric orbits beyond 50 AU, in the region of phase space conventionally known as the "Scattered Disk." Indeed, 90% of the simulated particles that persist over the age of the solar system in the Scattered-Disk zone never had a close encounter with Neptune but instead were promoted into these eccentric orbits by Neptune's resonances during the migration epoch. This indicates that the observed Scattered Disk might not be so scattered. This model also produced only a handful of Centaurs, all of which originated at Neptune's mean-motion resonances in the Kuiper Belt. However, a noteworthy deficiency of the migration model considered here is that it does not account for the observed abundance of Main Belt KBOs having inclinations higher than 15°. In order to rigorously compare the model end state with the observed Kuiper Belt in a manner that accounts for telescopic selection effects, Monte Carlo methods are used to assign sizes and magnitudes to the simulated particles that survive over the age of the solar system. If the model considered here is indeed representative of the outer solar system's early history, then the following conclusions are obtained: (1) The observed 3 : 2 and 2 : 1 resonant populations are both depleted by a factor of ∼20 relative to model expectations; this depletion is likely due to unmodeled effects, possibly perturbations by other large planetesimals. (2) The size distribution of those KBOs inhabiting the 3 : 2 resonance is significantly shallower than the Main Belt's size distribution. (3) The total number of KBOs having radii R > 50 km and orbiting interior to Neptune's 2 : 1 resonance is N ∼ 1.7 × 105; these bodies have a total mass of M ∼ 0.08(ρ/1 g cm-3)(p/0.04)-3/2 M⊕, assuming they have a material density ρ and an albedo p. We also report estimates of the abundances and masses of the Belt's various subpopulations (e.g., the resonant KBOs, the Main Belt, and the so-called Scattered Disk) and provide upper limits on the abundance of Centaurs and Neptune's Trojans, as well as upper limits on the sizes and abundances of hypothetical KBOs that might inhabit the a > 50 AU zone.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Paleontology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/11caf61a544bee9709237c6687808f6a2ed5883e

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Citations in the corpus

Nomenclature in the Outer Solar System (2008, background): “…resonance (Duncan and Levison, 1997) or (b) nearly resonant objects to escape into the Neptune-coupled regime (Morbidelli, 1997); and (3) the relative population of the resonances may be a diagnostic of the amount and/or rate of planet migration (Chiang and Jordan, 2002; Hahn and Malhotra, 2005).”
THE CANADA–FRANCE ECLIPTIC PLANE SURVEY—L3 DATA RELEASE: THE ORBITAL STRUCTURE OF THE KUIPER BELT (2009, methodology): “…CFEPS L7 synthetic model and the CFEPS survey simulator are available from the project web site630 www.cfeps.net.631 Several models have been proposed to explain the dynamical structure of the Kuiper belt (Malhotra632 1993; Ida et al. 2000; Hahn & Malhotra 2005; Levison et al. 2008, to name a few).”
The Gemini Deep Planet Survey (2007, background): “…further from interaction of the planet with the solid particlesin the disk after the gas has dissipated (e.g. Levison et al. 2007); there is in fact strong evidence that this mechanism has played an important role in the Solar system (Fernandez & Ip 1984; Malhotra 1995; Hahn & Malhotra 2005).”
EVIDENCE FOR SLOW MIGRATION OF NEPTUNE FROM THE INCLINATION DISTRIBUTION OF KUIPER BELT OBJECTS (2015, methodology): “Plutinos are therefore not captured in our model from the low-eccentricity orbits as in, for example, Hahn & Malhotra (2005).”
Origin and Evolution of Short-period Comets (2017, unknown): “…Trojans (Morbidelli et al. 2005, Nesvorný et al. 2013), irregular satellites (Nesvorný et al. 2007, 2014), Kuiper belt (Malhotra 1993, Gomes 2003, Hahn & Malhotra 2005; Levison et al. 2008; Dawson & Murray-Clay 2012; Nesvorný 2015a,b; NV16), scattered disk (BM13, Kaib & Sheppard 2016,…”
Origin of the structure of the Kuiper belt during a dynamical instability in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune (2007, methodology): “models by Malhotra (1995) and Hahn & Malhotra (2005) , the only way to explain the fact”