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The Influence of Planet 9 on the Orbits of Distant TNOs: The Case for a Low Perihelion Planet

By SpaceRef Editor
August 6, 2018
Filed under ,

Jessica Cáceres, Rodney Gomes
(Submitted on 3 Aug 2018)

The hypothesis of an additional planet in the outer Solar System has gained new support as a result of the confinement noted in the angular orbital elements of distant trans-Neptunian objects. Orbital parameters proposed for the external perturber suggest semimajor axes between 500 and 1000 au, perihelion distances between 200 and 400 au for masses between 10 and 20 $M_{\oplus}$. In this paper we study the possibility that lower perihelion distances for the additional planet can lead to angular confinements as observed in the population of objects with semimajor axes greater than 250 au and perihelion distances higher than 40 au. We performed numerical integrations of a set of particles subjected to the influence of the known planets and the putative perturber during the age of the Solar System and compared our outputs with the observed population through a statistical analysis. Our investigations showed that lower perihelion distances from the outer planet usually lead to more substantial confinements than higher ones, while retaining the Classical Kuiper Belt as well as the ratio of the number of detached with perihelion distances higher than 42 au to scattering objects in the range of semimajor axes from 100 au to 200 au.

Subjects:    Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as:    arXiv:1808.01248 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1808.01248v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Jessica Cáceres [view email]
[v1] Fri, 3 Aug 2018 16:24:35 GMT (4624kb,D)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.01248

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