USING KUIPER BELT BINARIES TO CONSTRAIN NEPTUNE'S MIGRATION HISTORY
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, MS-51, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
Approximately 10%-20% of all Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) occupy mean-motion resonances with Neptune. This dynamical configuration likely resulted from resonance capture as Neptune migrated outward during the late stages of planet formation. The details of Neptune's planetesimal-driven migration, including its radial extent and the concurrent eccentricity evolution of the planet, are the subject of considerable debate. Two qualitatively different proposals for resonance capture have been proposed-migration-induced capture driven by smooth outward evolution of Neptune's orbit and chaotic capture driven by damping of the planet's eccentricity near its current semi-major axis. We demonstrate that the distribution of comparable-mass, wide-separation binaries occupying resonant orbits can differentiate between these two scenarios. If migration-induced capture occurred, this fraction records information about the formation locations of different populations of KBOs. Chaotic capture, in contrast, randomizes the orbits of bodies as they are placed in resonance. In particular, if KBO binaries are formed by dynamical capture in a protoplanetary disk with a surface mass density typical of observed extrasolar disks, then migration-induced capture produces the following signatures. The 2:1 resonance should contain a dynamically cold component, with inclinations less than 5{sup 0}-10{sup 0}, having a binary fraction comparable to that among cold classical KBOs. If the 3:2 resonance also hosts a cold component, its binary fraction should be 20%-30% lower than in the cold classical belt. Among cold 2:1 (and if present 3:2) KBOs, objects with eccentricities e < 0.2 should have a binary fraction {approx}20% larger than those with e>0.2. Other binary formation scenarios and disk surface density profiles can generate analogous signatures but produce quantitatively different results. Searches for cold components in the binary fractions of resonant KBOs are currently practical. The additional migration-generated trends described here may be distinguished with objects discovered by LSST.
- OSTI ID:
- 21574822
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 730, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/730/2/132; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
NEPTUNE ON TIPTOES: DYNAMICAL HISTORIES THAT PRESERVE THE COLD CLASSICAL KUIPER BELT
Dynamical implantation of objects in the Kuiper Belt