2013MNRAS.433.2938B -
Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 433, 2938-2945 (2013/August-3)
The short-lived production of exozodiacal dust in the aftermath of a dynamical instability in planetary systems.
BONSOR A., RAYMOND S.N. and AUGEREAU J.-C.
Abstract (from CDS):
Excess emission, associated with warm, dust belts, commonly known as exozodis, has been observed around a third of nearby stars. The high levels of dust required to explain the observations are not generally consistent with steady-state evolution. A common suggestion is that the dust results from the aftermath of a dynamical instability, an event akin to the Solar system's Late Heavy Bombardment. In this work, we use a data base of N-body simulations to investigate the aftermath of dynamical instabilities between giant planets in systems with outer planetesimal belts. We find that, whilst there is a significant increase in the mass of material scattered into the inner regions of the planetary system following an instability, this is a short-lived effect. Using the maximum lifetime of this material, we determine that even if every star has a planetary system that goes unstable, there is a very low probability that we observe more than a maximum of 1percent of sun-like stars in the aftermath of an instability, and that the fraction of planetary systems currently in the aftermath of an instability is more likely to be limited to ≤ 0.06percent. This probability increases marginally for younger or higher mass stars. We conclude that the production of warm dust in the aftermath of dynamical instabilities is too short-lived to be the dominant source of the abundantly observed exozodiacal dust.
Abstract Copyright:
© 2013 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society (2013)
Journal keyword(s):
methods: numerical - planets and satellites: dynamical evolution and stability - planets and satellites: general - zodiacal dust - planetary systems
Simbad objects:
4
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