Migration of planets embedded in a circumstellar disk
Abstract
Planetary migration poses a serious challenge to theories of planet formation. In gaseous and planetesimal disks, migration can remove planets as quickly as they form. To explore migration in a planetesimal disk, we combine analytic and numerical approaches. After deriving general analytic migration rates for isolated planets, we use N-body simulations to confirm these results for fast and slow migration modes. Migration rates scale as 1/m (for massive planets) and 1/(1+(e_H/3)^3), where m is the mass of a planet and e_H is the eccentricity of the background planetesimals in Hill units. When multiple planets stir the disk, our simulations yield the new result that large-scale migration ceases. Thus, growing planets do not migrate through planetesimal disks. To extend these results to migration in gaseous disks, we compare physical interactions and rates. Although migration through a gaseous disk is an important issue for the formation of gas giants, we conclude that migration has little impact on the formation of terrestrial planets.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1101.4025,
title = {Migration of planets embedded in a circumstellar disk},
author = {Benjamin C. Bromley and Scott J. Kenyon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1101.4025},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
ApJ, accepted; 39 pages, 12 figures (animation of Figure 10 is available at http://www.physics.utah.edu/~bromley/migration/migratefast.mpg)