Giant Planet Influence on the Collective Gravity of a Primordial Scattered Disk

Abstract

Axisymmetric disks of high eccentricity, low mass bodies on near-Keplerian orbits are unstable to an out-of-plane buckling. This "inclination instability" exponentially grows the orbital inclinations, raises perihelia distances and clusters in argument of perihelion. Here we examine the instability in a massive primordial scattered disk including the orbit-averaged gravitational influence of the giant planets. We show that differential apsidal precession induced by the giant planets will suppress the inclination instability unless the primordial mass is $\gtrsim 20$ Earth masses. We also show that the instability should produce a "perihelion gap" at semi-major axes of hundreds of AU, as the orbits of the remnant population are more likely to have extremely large perihelion distances ($\mathcal{O}(100\mathrm{AU})$) than intermediate values.

References in corpus (4)

• Dynamics of Barred Galaxies
• The Planet Nine Hypothesis
• Dynamical Evolution Induced by Planet Nine
• Secular Eccentricity Oscillations in Axisymmetric Disks of Eccentric Orbits

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Tuning the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Observing Strategy for Solar System Science
• Oort cloud Ecology II: The chronology of the formation of the Oort cloud
• Outer Solar System Perihelion Gap Formation Through Interactions with a Hypothetical Distant Giant Planet
• Steeper Scattered Disks Buckle Faster
• Features of the Dynamical Evolution of a Massive Disk of Trans-Neptunian Objects