1. HIDING IN THE SHADOWS. II. COLLISIONAL DUST AS EXOPLANET MARKERS.
- Author
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Jack Dobinson, Zoë M. Leinhardt, Stefan Lines, Philip J. Carter, Sarah E. Dodson-Robinson, and Nick A. Teanby
- Subjects
EXTRASOLAR planets ,PROTOPLANETARY disks ,CIRCUMBINARY planets ,ACCRETION (Astrophysics) ,SIMULATION methods & models - Abstract
Observations of the youngest planets (∼1–10 Myr for a transitional disk) will increase the accuracy of our planet formation models. Unfortunately, observations of such planets are challenging and time-consuming to undertake, even in ideal circumstances. Therefore, we propose the determination of a set of markers that can preselect promising exoplanet-hosting candidate disks. To this end, N-body simulations were conducted to investigate the effect of an embedded Jupiter-mass planet on the dynamics of the surrounding planetesimal disk and the resulting creation of second-generation collisional dust. We use a new collision model that allows fragmentation and erosion of planetesimals, and dust-sized fragments are simulated in a post-process step including non-gravitational forces due to stellar radiation and a gaseous protoplanetary disk. Synthetic images from our numerical simulations show a bright double ring at 850 μm for a low-eccentricity planet, whereas a high-eccentricity planet would produce a characteristic inner ring with asymmetries in the disk. In the presence of first-generation primordial dust these markers would be difficult to detect far from the orbit of the embedded planet, but would be detectable inside a gap of planetary origin in a transitional disk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016
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