Related papers: Evidence for an extended scattered disk
Following the suggestion of Black (1997) that some massive extrasolar planets may be associated with the tail of the distribution of stellar companions, we investigate a scenario in which 5 < N < 100 planetary mass objects are assumed to…
The outer solar system exhibits an anomalous pattern of orbital clustering, characterized by an approximate alignment of the apsidal lines and angular momentum vectors of distant, long-term stable Kuiper belt objects. One explanation for…
In the nucleated instability picture of gas giant formation, the final stage is the rapid accretion of a massive gas envelope by a solid core, bringing about a tenfold or more increase in mass. This tends to trigger the scattering of any…
The orbital evolution of more than 22000 Jupiter-crossing objects under the gravitational influence of planets was investigated. We found that the mean collision probabilities of Jupiter-crossing objects (from initial orbits close to the…
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…
Many warm Jupiters (WJs) have substantial eccentricities, which are linked to their formation and migration histories. This paper explores eccentricity excitation of WJs due to planet-planet scattering, beginning with 3-4 planets in…
We use a secular model to describe the non-resonant dynamics of trans-Neptunian objects in the presence of an external ten-earth-mass perturber. The secular dynamics is analogous to an "eccentric Kozai mechanism" but with both an inner…
Among exoplanets, the small-size population constitutes the dominant one, with a diversity of properties and compositions ranging from rocky to gas dominated envelope. While a large fraction of them have masses and radii similar to or…
In the late stages of accretion leading up to the formation of planetesimals, particles grew to pebbles the size of 1-mm to tens of cm. That is the same size range that dominates the present-day comet mass loss. Meteoroids that size cause…
Our current knowledge of the dynamical structure of the Kuiper Belt is reviewed here. Numerical results on long term orbital evolution and dynamical mechanisms underlying the transport of objects out of the Kuiper Belt are discussed.…
Context: More than 50 exoplanets have been found around giant stars, revealing different properties when compared to planets orbiting solar-type stars. In particular, they are Super-Jupiters and are not found orbiting interior to $\sim$ 0.5…
Nereid, a satellite of Neptune, has a highly eccentric prograde orbit with a semi-major axis larger than 200 Neptune radius and is classified as an irregular satellite. Although the capture origin of irregular satellites has been widely…
The dust disk around Beta Pictoris must be produced by collision or by evaporation of orbiting Kuiper belt-like objects. Here we extend the already proposed Orbiting-Evaporating-Bodies (OEB) scenario in which the disk is a gigantic…
Nbody simulations are used to examine the consequences of Neptune's outward migration into the Kuiper Belt, with the simulated endstates being compared rigorously and quantitatively to the observations. These simulations confirm the…
To study the population properties of small, remote objects beyond Neptune's orbit in the outer solar system, of kilometer size or smaller, serendipitous occultation search is so far the only way. For hectometer-sized Trans-Neptunian…
We report the discovery of a dwarf planet candidate, 2017 OF201, currently located at a distance of 90 au. Its orbit is extremely wide and extends to the inner Oort cloud, with a semi-major axis of 830 au and a perihelion of 45 au,…
The scattering of small bodies by planets is an important dynamical process in planetary systems. We present an analytical model to describe this process using the simplifying assumption that each particle's dynamics is dominated by a…
We report the discovery of a minor planet (2006 SQ372) on an orbit with a perihelion of 24 AU and a semimajor axis of 796 AU. Dynamical simulations show that this is a transient orbit and is unstable on a timescale of 200 Myrs. Falling near…
Chaotic dynamics are expected during and after planet formation, and a leading mechanism to explain large eccentricities of gas giant exoplanets is planet-planet gravitational scattering. The same scattering has been invoked to explain…
To understand how the multitude of planetary systems that have been discovered come to be, we need to study systems at different evolutionary stages, with different central stars but also in different environments. The most challenging…