English

Orbital evolution of planetesimals in gaseous disks

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2015-05-08 v1

Abstract

Planets are formed from collisional growth of small bodies in a protoplanetary disk. Bodies much larger than approximately 11\,m are mainly controlled by the gravity of the host star and experience weak gas drag; their orbits are mainly expressed by orbital elements: semimajor axes aa, eccentricities ee, and inclinations ii, which are modulated by gas drag. In a previous study, a˙\dot a, e˙\dot e, and i˙\dot i were analytically derived for e1e \ll 1 and iH/ai \ll H/a, where HH is the scale height of the disk. Their formulae are valid in the early stage of planet formation. However, once massive planets are formed, ee and ii increase greatly. Indeed, some small bodies in the solar system have very large ee and ii. Therefore, in this paper, I analytically derive formulae for a˙\dot a, e˙\dot e, and i˙\dot i for 1e211-e^2 \ll 1 and iH/ai \ll H/a and for iH/ai \gg H/a. The formulae combined from these limited equations will represent the results of orbital integration unless e1e \geq 1 or i>πH/ai > \pi - H/a. Since the derived formulae are applicable for bodies not only in a protoplanetary disk but also in a circumplanetary disk, I discuss the possibility of the capture of satellites in a circumplanetary disk using the formulae.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1505.01568,
  title  = {Orbital evolution of planetesimals in gaseous disks},
  author = {Hiroshi Kobayashi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.01568},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

accepted for publication in Earth, Planets and Space, 11 pages, 4 figures