Prospects for Detection of Catastrophic Collisions in Debris Disks

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0503551

From: Scott J. Kenyon [view email]

Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:10:54 GMT   (223kb)

We investigate the prospects for detecting dust from two body collisions
during the late stages of planet formation at 1-150 AU. We develop an analytic
model to describe the formation of a dusty cloud of debris and use numerical
coagulation and n-body calculations to predict observable signals from these
events. In a minimum mass solar nebula, collisions of 100-1000 km objects at
distances of 3-5 AU or less from the parent star are observable at mid-infrared
wavelengths as bright clumps or rings of dust. At 24 microns, the clumps are
roughly 0.1-1 mag brighter than emission from dust in the background debris
disk. In edge-on systems, dusty clumps produce eclipses with depths of 1.0 mag
or less that last for roughly 100 orbital periods. Large-scale surveys for
transits from exosolar planets, such as Kepler, can plausibly detect these
eclipses and provide important constraints on the terrestrial environment for
ages of less than or roughly 100-300 Myr.

References and citations for this submission:

SLAC-SPIRES HEP (refers to ,
cited by, arXiv reformatted);

CiteBase (autonomous citation navigation and analysis)

Which authors of this paper are endorsers?