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Auteurs principaux: Campbell, Hunter M., Anderson, Kalee E., Kaib, Nathan A.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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Accès en ligne:https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09908
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author Campbell, Hunter M.
Anderson, Kalee E.
Kaib, Nathan A.
author_facet Campbell, Hunter M.
Anderson, Kalee E.
Kaib, Nathan A.
contents Nearly one-third of objects occupying the most circular, coplanar Kuiper belt orbits (the cold classical belt) are binary, and several percent of them are "ultra-wide" binaries (UWBs): 100-km-sized companions spaced by tens of thousands of km. UWBs are dynamically fragile, and their existence is thought to constrain early Solar System processes and conditions. However, we demonstrate that UWBs can instead attain their wide architectures well after the Solar System's earliest epochs, when Neptune's orbital migration implants the modern non-cold, or "dynamic", Kuiper belt population. During this implantation, cold classical belt binaries are likely to have close encounters with many planetesimals scattered across the region, which can efficiently dissociate any existing UWBs and widen a small fraction of tighter binaries into UWB-like arrangements. Thus, today's UWBs may not be primordial and cannot be used to constrain the early Solar System as directly as previously surmised.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_09908
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Non-Primordial Origin for the Widest Binaries in the Kuiper Belt
Campbell, Hunter M.
Anderson, Kalee E.
Kaib, Nathan A.
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Nearly one-third of objects occupying the most circular, coplanar Kuiper belt orbits (the cold classical belt) are binary, and several percent of them are "ultra-wide" binaries (UWBs): 100-km-sized companions spaced by tens of thousands of km. UWBs are dynamically fragile, and their existence is thought to constrain early Solar System processes and conditions. However, we demonstrate that UWBs can instead attain their wide architectures well after the Solar System's earliest epochs, when Neptune's orbital migration implants the modern non-cold, or "dynamic", Kuiper belt population. During this implantation, cold classical belt binaries are likely to have close encounters with many planetesimals scattered across the region, which can efficiently dissociate any existing UWBs and widen a small fraction of tighter binaries into UWB-like arrangements. Thus, today's UWBs may not be primordial and cannot be used to constrain the early Solar System as directly as previously surmised.
title A Non-Primordial Origin for the Widest Binaries in the Kuiper Belt
topic Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09908