Can the dustiest main sequence stars tell us about the rocky planet formation process?

Carl Melis
(Submitted on 18 Sep 2015)

Main sequence stars hosting extreme quantities of inner planetary system debris are likely experiencing transient dust production events. The nature of these events, if they can be unambiguously attributed to a single process, can potentially inform us on the formation and/or early evolution of rocky Earth-like planets. In this contribution I examine some of the dustiest main sequence stars known and three processes that may be capable of reproducing their observed properties. Through this activity I also make an estimate for the likelihood of an A-type star to have an asteroid belt-like planetesimal population.

Comments: Proceedings of IAUS314. 6 pages, 1 figure
Subjects: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:1509.05726 [astro-ph.SR] (or arXiv:1509.05726v1 [astro-ph.SR] for this version)
Submission history
From: Carl Melis
[v1] Fri, 18 Sep 2015 17:44:18 GMT (36kb)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.05726