The Rarity of Very Red Trans-Neptunian Objects in the Scattered Disk
- Institut de recherche sur les exoplanètes, Université de Montréal, 2900 boul. Édouard-Montpetit, Montréal, H3T 1J4 (Canada)
- Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States)
- Centre for Planetary Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4 (Canada)
- Department of Physics, American University of Beirut, PO Box 11-0236, Riad El-Solh, Beirut 11097 2020 (Lebanon)
We investigate the origins of the photometrically very red (VR) and less red (LR) trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). We first reanalyze the data set of Marsset et al. and find that in addition to the known color–inclination correlation in hot TNOs, a similar trend exists for color–eccentricity. We show that VR TNOs are sharply constrained to eccentricities <0.42 and inclinations <21°, leading to a paucity of VR scattered disk and distant mean motion resonance objects. We then interpret these findings using N-body simulations accounting for Neptune’s outward migration into a massless particles disk and find that these observations are best reproduced with an LR-to-VR color transition line between ∼38 and 42 au in the primordial disk, separating the objects’ formation locations. For an initial surface density profile (Σ ∝ 1/r {sup 2}), a color transition around 38 au is needed to explain the high abundance of VR plutinos, but it creates too many VR scattered disk objects, while a transition line around 42 au seems to better reproduce the scattered disk colors but creates virtually no VR plutinos. Our simulations furthermore show that the rarity of VR particles at high eccentricity is possibly due to the absence of sweeping higher-order MMRs, and secular resonances, beyond 42 au. Inspecting individual populations, we show that the majority of VR SDOs originate as objects trapped in Neptune’s second- and third-order MMRs. These then evolve due to diffusion, scattering, Kozai–Lidov cycles, and secular resonances into their current orbits. Future unbiased color surveys are crucial to better constrain the TNOs dynamical origins.
- OSTI ID:
- 23159272
- Journal Information:
- The Astronomical Journal (Online), Vol. 162, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1538-3881
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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