Related papers: The Dynamical Structure of the Kuiper Belt and its…
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.…
Our understanding of the history of the solar system has undergone a revolution in recent years, owing to new theoretical insights into the origin of Pluto and the discovery of the Kuiper belt and its rich dynamical structure. The emerging…
Several properties of the Solar System, including the wide radial spacing of the giant planets, can be explained if planets radially migrated by exchanging orbital energy and momentum with outer disk planetesimals. Neptune's…
This text was originally written to accompany a series of lectures that I gave at the `35th Saas-Fee advanced course' in Switzerland and at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaii. It reviews my current understanding of the…
The cold classical population of the Kuiper belt exhibits a wide variety of unique physical characteristics, which collectively suggest that its dynamical coherence has been maintained through out the solar system's lifetime.…
The origin of the orbital structure of the cold component of the Kuiper belt is still a hot subject of investigation. Several features of the solar system suggest that the giant planets underwent a phase of global dynamical instability, but…
The early gas-dust solar nebula is considered: the gasdynamic theory is used to study the gravitational Jeans-type instability in its protoplanetary disk. The implications for the origin of the solar system are discussed. It is shown that a…
In the recent years, the "Nice" model of solar system formation has attained an unprecedented level of success in reproducing much of the observed orbital architecture of the solar system by evolving the planets to their current locations…
Most planetary systems -- including our own -- are born within stellar clusters, where interactions with neighboring stars can help shape the system architecture. This paper develops an orbit-averaged formalism to characterize the cluster's…
We explore the origin and orbital evolution of the Kuiper belt in the framework of a recent model of the dynamical evolution of the giant planets, sometimes known as the Nice model. This model is characterized by a short, but violent,…
The origin of the highly eccentric, inclined, and resonance-locked orbit of Pluto has long been a puzzle. A possible explanation has been proposed recently [Malhotra, R., {\it Nature} 365:819-21 (1993)] which suggests that these…
The asteroid belt is the leftover of the original planetesimal population in the inner solar system. However, currently the asteroids have orbits with all possible values of eccentricities and inclinations compatible with long-term…
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 small bodies in the Kuiper Belt region of the distant Solar System are leftovers from planet formation. Their orbital distribution today tells us about how giant planets migrated, while their surface properties, shapes, and sizes tell…
Dynamical evolution plays a key role in shaping the current properties of star clusters and star cluster systems. A detailed understanding of the effects of evolutionary processes is essential to be able to disentangle the properties which…
In this paper we study the role of dynamical friction on the evolution of a population of large objects ($m>10^{22}$ g) at heliocentric distances $>70$ AU in the Kuiper Belt. We show that the already flat distribution of these objects must…
The orbital evolution and stability of planetary systems with interaction from the belts is studied using the standard phase-plane analysis. In addition to the fixed point which corresponds to the Keplerian orbit, there are other fixed…
Nearly one-third of objects occupying the most circular, coplanar Kuiper belt orbits (the cold classical belt) are binary, and several percent of them are "ultra-wide" binaries (UWBs): 100-km-sized companions spaced by tens of thousands of…
We have proposed an alternative model for the formation of our solar system that does not predict any mean-motion resonant interactions, planetary migrations, or self-gravitating instabilities in the very early isothermal solar nebula and…
Escalating observations of exo-minor planets and their destroyed remnants both passing through the solar system and within white dwarf planetary systems motivate an understanding of the orbital history and fate of exo-Kuiper belts and…