Related papers: Forming the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt in a light …
Gas has been detected in many exoplanetary systems ($>$10 Myr), thought to be released in the destruction of volatile-rich planetesimals orbiting in exo-Kuiper belts. In this letter, we aim to explore whether gas is also expected in the…
The existence of extremely wide binaries in the low-inclination component of the Kuiper Belt provides a unique handle on the dynamical history of this population. Some popular frameworks of the formation of the Kuiper Belt suggest that…
Motivated by inflation, the theory of big-bang nucleosynthesis and the quest for a deeper understanding of the fundamental forces and particles, a very successful paradigm for the development of structure in the Universe has evolved. It…
Planetesimals are compact astrophysical objects roughly 1-1000 km in size, massive enough to be held together by gravity. They can grow by accreting material to become full-size planets. Planetesimals themselves are thought to form by…
We consider a belt of small bodies around a star, captured in one of the external or 1:1 mean-motion resonances with a massive perturber. The objects in the belt collide with each other. Combining methods of celestial mechanics and…
A distant, massive planet in the outer solar system has recently been proposed to explain some observed features of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Here we use N-body simulations of the formation of the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud as…
Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with diameter d>100 km moving now in not very eccentric orbits could be formed directly by the compression of large rarefied dust condensations (with semi-major axes a>30 AU), but not by the accretion of…
As indicated by their special characteristics, the cold classical Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) formed and survived at 42-47 au. Notably, they show a large fraction of equal-size binaries whose formation is probably related to the accretion of…
We have investigated effects of early stellar encounters on a protoplanetary disk (planetesimal disk) and found that they can explain the high eccentricities and inclinations observed in the outer part ($>42$AU) of the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt…
With perihelia well beyond Neptune, but semimajor axes and eccentricities indicative of substantial perturbation, the origins of detached trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) remain a dynamical puzzle. In particular, detached TNOs with orbital…
We report several results related to the dynamical evolution of dust produced in the Kuiper Belt (KB). We show that its particle size frequency distribution in space is greatly changed from the distribution at production, as a results of…
We study the effects of an encounter between a wandering cosmic object (WCO) of 0.1 solar mass and some Kuiperian Objects (KO). First, we let the WCO cross the out-skirt of ou Kuiper belt. Such encounters can produce two types of solar…
Colors and binarity provide important constraints on the Kuiper belt formation. The cold classical objects at radial distance r=42-47 au from the Sun are predominantly very red (spectral slope s>17%) and often exist as equal-size binaries…
The process by which a system of non-luminous bodies form around a star is fundamental to understanding the origins of our own solar system and how it fits into the context of other systems we have begun to study around other stars. Some…
Debris disks are scaled-up analogs of the Kuiper Belt in which dust is generated by collisions between planetesimals. In the "collisional cascade" model of debris disks, dust lost to radiation pressure and winds is constantly replenished by…
We describe planetesimal accretion calculations in the Kuiper Belt. Our evolution code simulates planetesimal growth in a single annulus and includes velocity evolution but not fragmentation. Test results match analytic solutions and…
This chapter reviews accretion models for Kuiper belt objects (KBOs), discussing in particular the compatibility of the observed properties of the KBO population with the streaming instability paradigm. Then it discusses how the dynamical…
The Milky Way has a giant stellar structure in the solar neighborhood, which has a size of $\sim 1$ kpc, a mass of $\sim 10^6 {\rm M}_{\odot}$, and a ring-like distribution of young stars. Fundamental physical properties of this local…
Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, chemical enrichment, reionization, etc. are thought to be intimately related to the nature and evolution of pregalactic structure. In particular…
It is likely that multiple bodies with masses between those of Mars and Earth ("planetary embryos") formed in the outer planetesimal disk of the solar system. Some of these were likely scattered by the giant planets into orbits with…