Tracking Neptune's Migration History through High-Perihelion Resonant Trans-Neptunian Objects

Abstract

Recently, Sheppard et al. (2016) presented the discovery of seven new trans-Neptunian objects with moderate eccentricities, perihelia beyond 40 AU, and semimajor axes beyond 50 AU. Like the few previously known objects on similar orbits, these objects' semimajor axes are just beyond the Kuiper belt edge and clustered around Neptunian mean motion resonances (MMRs). These objects likely obtained their observed orbits while trapped within MMRs, when the Kozai-Lidov mechanism raised their perihelia and weakened Neptune's dynamical influence. Using numerical simulations that model the production of this population, we find that high-perihelion objects near Neptunian MMRs can constrain the nature and timescale of Neptune's past orbital migration. In particular, the population near the 3:1 MMR (near 62 AU) is especially useful due to its large population and short dynamical evolution timescale. If Neptune finishes migrating within ~100 Myrs or less, we predict over 90% of high-perihelion objects near the 3:1 MMR will have semimajor axes within 1 AU of each other, very near the modern resonance's center. On the other hand, if Neptune's migration takes ~300 Myrs, we expect ~50% of this population to reside in dynamically fossilized orbits over ~1 AU closer to the Sun than the modern resonance. We highlight 2015 KH162 as a likely member of this fossilized 3:1 population. Under any plausible migration scenario, nearly all high-perihelion objects in resonances beyond the 4:1 MMR (near 76 AU) reach their orbits well after Neptune stops migrating and comprise a recently generated, dynamically active population.

arXiv commentAccepted to ApJ; 15 pages, 13 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (24)

• THE ORIGIN OF PLUTO'S ORBIT: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SOLAR SYSTEM BEYOND NEPTUNE
• Evidence for a Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System
• Statistical Study of the Early Solar System's Instability with 4, 5 and 6 Giant Planets
• The Canada-France Ecliptic Plane Survey - Full Data Release: The orbital structure of the Kuiper belt
• Neptune's Migration into a Stirred-Up Kuiper Belt: A Detailed Comparison of Simulations to Observations
• Discovery of a planetary-sized object in the scattered Kuiper belt
• The Resonant Transneptunian Populations
• The Evidence for Slow Migration of Neptune from the Inclination Distribution of Kuiper Belt Objects
• Young Solar System's Fifth Giant Planet?
• Constructing the secular architecture of the solar system II: The terrestrial planets
• Retention of a Primordial Cold Classical Kuiper Belt in an Instability-Driven Model of Solar System Formation
• Neptune's Orbital Migration Was Grainy, Not Smooth
• The formation of Uranus and Neptune among Jupiter and Saturn
• Jumping Neptune Can Explain the Kuiper Belt Kernel
• The Outer Solar System Origins Survey: I. Design and First-Quarter Discoveries
• Neptune's wild days: constraints from the eccentricity distribution of the classical Kuiper Belt
• Resonance sticking in the scattered disk
• OSSOS III - Resonant Trans-Neptunian Populations: Constraints from the first quarter of the Outer Solar System Origins Survey
• On a Scattered-Disk Origin for the 2003 El61 Collisional Family - an Example of the Importance of Collisions on the Dynamics of Small Bodies
• The orbital distribution of trans-Neptunian objects beyond 50 au
• Beyond the Kuiper Belt Edge: New High Perihelion Trans-Neptunian Objects With Moderate Semi-major Axes and Eccentricities
• The 5:1 Neptune Resonance as Probed by CFEPS: Dynamics and Population
• Discovery of a low-eccentricity, high-inclination Kuiper belt object at 58 AU
• Dynamical formation of detached trans-Neptunian objects close to the 2:5 and 1:3 mean motion resonances with Neptune

Cited by in corpus (46)

• Dynamical Evolution of the Early Solar System
• OSSOS. VII. 800+ trans-Neptunian objects - the complete data release
• Origin and Evolution of Short-Period Comets
• Origin and evolution of long-period comets
• New Extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects: Towards a Super-Earth in the Outer Solar System
• A search of the full six years of the Dark Energy Survey for outer Solar System objects
• Binary Survival in the Outer Solar System
• A New High Perihelion Inner Oort Cloud Object: 2015 TG387
• The Scattered Disc of HR 8799
• OSSOS: XIII. Fossilized Resonant Dropouts Tentatively Confirm Neptune's Migration was Grainy and Slow
• Trans-Neptunian objects found in the first four years of the Dark Energy Survey
• Born eccentric: constraints on Jupiter and Saturn's pre-instability orbits
• Producing Distant Planets by Mutual Scattering of Planetary Embryos
• Trans-Neptunian Objects Transiently Stuck in Neptune's Mean Motion Resonances: Numerical simulations of the current population
• Not a simple relationship between Neptune's migration speed and Kuiper belt inclination excitation
• Neptune's 5:2 Resonance in the Kuiper Belt
• OSSOS XV: Probing the Distant Solar System with Observed Scattering TNOs
• A Rogue Planet Helps Populate the Distant Kuiper Belt
• Details of Resonant Structures Within a Nice Model Kuiper Belt: Predictions for High-Perihelion TNO Detections
• OSSOS XVIII: Constraining migration models with the 2:1 resonance using the Outer Solar System Origins Survey
• Preliminary constraints on the location of the recently hypothesized new planet of the Solar System from planetary orbital dynamics
• Origin and Evolution of Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids
• A dwarf planet class object in the 21:5 resonance with Neptune
• Eccentric Early Migration of Neptune
• Is There an Earth-like Planet in the Distant Kuiper Belt?
• Bi-lobed Shape of Comet 67P from a Collapsed Binary
• Oort cloud asteroids: Collisional evolution, the Nice Model, and the Grand Tack
• Perspectives on the distribution of orbits of distant Trans-Neptunian Objects
• Orbital precession in the distant solar system; further constraining the Planet Nine hypothesis with numerical simulations
• The rarity of very red TNOs in the scattered disk
• Stability of Neptune's distant resonances in the presence of Planet Nine
• OSSOS. XXIX. The Population and Perihelion Distribution of the Detached Kuiper Belt
• Orbital dynamics landscape near the most distant known trans-Neptunian objects
• Dynamical evolution of a self-gravitating planetesimal disk in the distant trans-Neptunian region
• On the origin of extreme trans-Neptunian objects within Modified Newtonian Dynamics
• A low-inclination neutral Trans-Neptunian Object in a extreme orbit
• Asymmetric Capture into Neptunian 1:2 Resonance
• Peculiar orbits and asymmetries in extreme trans-Neptunian space
• A Non-Primordial Origin for the Widest Binaries in the Kuiper Belt
• Signatures of a Distant Planet on the Inclination Distribution of the Detached Kuiper Belt
• A study of the high-inclination population in the Kuiper belt -- IV. High-order mean motion resonances in the classical region
• Study of Migration of Giant Planets and Formation of Populations of Distant Trans-Neptunian Objects in the Nice Model
• Combined JWST and HST Deep Imaging to Characterize the Smallest Known Trans-Neptunian Objects
• Study of the migration of Earth-like planets in planetesimal disks and the formation of debris disks
• The Surfaces of Small to Mid-Size Plutinos: Evidence of an Association Between Inclination and Surface Type
• Numerical estimation of the capture ability of Neptunian mean motion resonances