Over the past two decades, our knowledge of the Solar System's transneptunian region (often called the Kuiper Belt) has been gradually increasing. Observational surveys have greatly expand the inventory of TNOs, which are distant icy bodies thought to be relics from the giant planet formation and migration era. As more intricate details are unveiled in the TNO orbital and physical properties, several aspects are thought to be tightly linked to the Solar System's early formation.
In the main Kuiper Belt region, a complex bimodal inclination structure is present, leading to the common assertion that current TNOs may have accreted in different regions of the protoplanetary disk. The cold population likely formed in-situ and had not experienced significant orbital excitation from planetary perturbations, whereas the hot (high
inclination) population likely formed closer to the Sun and was implanted during the phase of giant planet migration. To study this blended inclination structure with better clarity, I develop an improved semi-analytical method to computer TNO `free' inclinations, which are well conserved and thus better represent the primordial inclination profile. This study shows that a 4° cut in free inclination (as opposed to the time-varying ecliptic inclination) produces a more reliable separation of the two population.
In the distant Kuiper Belt (semimajor axes beyond 50 au), several striking features seem to challenge our previous understanding of the early Solar System's dynamical history: 1) a very large population of objects in distant mean-motion resonances with Neptune, 2) a substantial detached population that are not dynamically coupled with Neptune's effects, and 3) the existence of three very large perihelion objects, represented by Sedna. No published planet formation and migration models simultaneously explain all three features and match de-biased observations.
I demonstrated in this thesis, that a super-Earth-mass planet temporarily present in the Solar System on a Neptune crossing orbit (referred to as a ”Rogue Planet“), is able to create all these structures in the distant Kuiper Belt. Such a planet would have formed in the giant planet region, and gotten scattered on a highly-eccentric orbit with a few hundred au semimajor axis with a typical lifetime of
100 Myr. Additionally, I showed this transient planet would not have heated the cold belt's very low free inclinations to larger than observed. Both the structures in the distant belt and the existence of an unheated cold belt provide constraints to narrow down the mass and possible dynamical histories the rogue might took.
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2023-03-21T09:00:002023-03-21T11:30:00Dynamics of Transneptunian Objects under the Influence of a Rogue PlanetEvent Information:
Over the past two decades, our knowledge of the Solar System's transneptunian region (often called the Kuiper Belt) has been gradually increasing. Observational surveys have greatly expand the inventory of TNOs, which are distant icy bodies thought to be relics from the giant planet formation and migration era. As more intricate details are unveiled in the TNO orbital and physical properties, several aspects are thought to be tightly linked to the Solar System's early formation.
In the main Kuiper Belt region, a complex bimodal inclination structure is present, leading to the common assertion that current TNOs may have accreted in different regions of the protoplanetary disk. The cold population likely formed in-situ and had not experienced significant orbital excitation from planetary perturbations, whereas the hot (high
inclination) population likely formed closer to the Sun and was implanted during the phase of giant planet migration. To study this blended inclination structure with better clarity, I develop an improved semi-analytical method to computer TNO `free' inclinations, which are well conserved and thus better represent the primordial inclination profile. This study shows that a 4° cut in free inclination (as opposed to the time-varying ecliptic inclination) produces a more reliable separation of the two population.
In the distant Kuiper Belt (semimajor axes beyond 50 au), several striking features seem to challenge our previous understanding of the early Solar System's dynamical history: 1) a very large population of objects in distant mean-motion resonances with Neptune, 2) a substantial detached population that are not dynamically coupled with Neptune's effects, and 3) the existence of three very large perihelion objects, represented by Sedna. No published planet formation and migration models simultaneously explain all three features and match de-biased observations.
I demonstrated in this thesis, that a super-Earth-mass planet temporarily present in the Solar System on a Neptune crossing orbit (referred to as a ”Rogue Planet“), is able to create all these structures in the distant Kuiper Belt. Such a planet would have formed in the giant planet region, and gotten scattered on a highly-eccentric orbit with a few hundred au semimajor axis with a typical lifetime of
100 Myr. Additionally, I showed this transient planet would not have heated the cold belt's very low free inclinations to larger than observed. Both the structures in the distant belt and the existence of an unheated cold belt provide constraints to narrow down the mass and possible dynamical histories the rogue might took.Event Location:
Hennings 318