Kuiper belt: formation and evolution
Alessandro Morbidelli, David Nesvorny
(Submitted on 5 Apr 2019)
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 structure of the KBO population, including the formation of its 5 sub-components (cold, hot, resonant, scattered and fossilized), can be quantitatively understood in the framewok of the giant planet instability. We also establish the connections between the KBO population and the Trojans of Jupiter and Neptune, the irregular satellites of all giant planets, the Oort cloud and the D-type main belt asteroids. Finally, we discuss the collisional evolution of the KBO population, arguing that the current size-frequency distribution below 100~km in size has been achieved as a collisional equilibrium in a few tens of My inside the original massive trans-Neptunain disk, possibly with the exception of the cold population sub-component.
Comments: Review chapter to be published in the book “The Transneptunian Solar System”, Dina Prialnik, Maria Antonietta Barucci, Leslie Young Eds. Elsevier
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:1904.02980 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1904.02980v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Alessandro Morbidelli
[v1] Fri, 5 Apr 2019 10:16:54 UTC (732 KB)
