Related papers: Outer edges of debris discs: how sharp is sharp?
The dust production in debris discs by grinding collisions of planetesimals requires their orbits to be stirred. However, stirring levels remain largely unconstrained, and consequently the stirring mechanisms as well. This work shows how…
Debris disc analysis and modelling provide crucial information about the structure and the processes at play in extrasolar planetary systems. In binary systems, this issue is more complex because the disc should in addition respond to the…
The radial structure of debris discs can encode important information about their dynamical and collisional history. In this paper we present a 3-phase analytical model to analyse the collisional evolution of solids in debris discs,…
In this paper a simple analytical model for the steady-state evolution of debris disks due to collisions is confronted with Spitzer observations of main sequence A stars. All stars are assumed to have planetesimal belts with a distribution…
The vertical thickness of debris discs is often used as a measure of these systems' dynamical excitation and as clues to the presence of hidden massive perturbers such as planetary embryos. However, this argument could be flawed because the…
Observations of debris disks allow for the study of planetary systems, even where planets have not been detected. However, debris disks are often only characterized by unresolved infrared excesses that resemble featureless blackbodies, and…
AU Microscopii is a 12 Myr old M dwarf that harbors an optically thin, edge-on disk of dust. The scattered light surface brightness falls with projected distance b from the star as b^-a; within b = 43 AU, a = 1-2, while outside 43 AU, a =…
Debris discs are our best means to probe the outer regions of planetary systems. Many studies assume that planets lie at the inner edges of debris discs, akin to Neptune and the Kuiper Belt, and use the disc morphologies to constrain those…
Irregular satellites are the minor bodies found orbiting all four Solar System giant planets, with large semi-major axes, eccentricities, and inclinations. Previous studies have determined that the Solar System's irregular satellites are…
Debris disks are the natural by-products of the planet formation process. Scattered or polarized light observations are mostly sensitive to small dust grains that are released from the grinding down of bigger planetesimals. High angular…
We present high-contrast images of HR 4796 A taken with Subaru/HiCIAO in H-band, resolving the debris disk in scattered light. The application of specialized angular differential imaging methods (ADI) allows us to trace the inner edge of…
The cross section of material in debris discs is thought to be dominated by the smallest grains that can still stay in bound orbits despite the repelling action of stellar radiation pressure. Thus the minimum (and typical) grain size…
Debris disks around main-sequence stars are believed to derive from planetesimal populations that have accreted at early epochs and survived possible planet formation processes. While debris disks must contain solids in a broad range of…
This study employed grain dynamic models to examine the density distribution of debris discs, and discussed the effects of the collisional time-intervals of asteroidal bodies, the maximum grain sizes, and the chemical compositions of the…
We aim to see whether debris belts evolving in between two stars may be impacted by the presence of the companion and whether this leaves any detectable signature that could be observed with current or future instruments. We consider a…
Debris discs are dusty belts of planetesimals around main-sequence stars, similar to the asteroid and Kuiper belts in our solar system. The planetesimals cannot be observed directly, yet they produce detectable dust in mutual collisions.…
Motivated by the reported dearth of debris discs around M stars, we use survival models to study the occurrence of planetesimal discs around them. These survival models describe a planetesimal disc with a small number of parameters,…
Planet perturbations are often invoked as a potential explanation for many spatial structures that have been imaged in debris discs. So far this issue has been mostly investigated with collisionless N-body numerical models. We numerically…
The presence of submicron grains has been inferred in several debris discs, despite the fact that these particles should be blown out by stellar radiation pressure on very short timescales. So far, no fully satisfying explanation has been…
We present a new multi-annulus code for the study of collisionally evolving extended debris discs. We first aim to confirm results obtained for a single-annulus system, namely that the size distribution in "real" debris discs always departs…