A Pluto--Charon Concerto II. Formation of a Circumbinary Disk of Debris After the Giant Impact

Abstract

Using a suite of numerical calculations, we consider the long-term evolution of circumbinary debris from the Pluto-Charon giant impact. Initially, these solids have large eccentricity and pericenters near Charon's orbit. On time scales of 100-1000 yr, dynamical interactions with Pluto and Charon lead to the ejection of most solids from the system. As the dynamics moves particles away from the barycenter, collisional damping reduces the orbital eccentricity of many particles. These solids populate a circumbinary disk in the Pluto-Charon orbital plane; a large fraction of this material lies within a `satellite zone' that encompasses the orbits of Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Compared to the narrow rings generated from the debris of a collision between a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) and Charon, disks produced after the giant impact are much more extended and may be a less promising option for producing small circumbinary satellites.

arXiv commentAJ in press, 28 pages with 2 tables and 11 figures

References in corpus (47)

• Long-Term Stability of Planets in Binary Systems
• The Pluto system: Initial results from its exploration by New Horizons
• Planet Formation by Coagulation: A Focus on Uranus and Neptune
• The origin of the Moon within a terrestrial synestia
• Surface Compositions Across Pluto and Charon
• Variations on Debris Disks: Icy Planet Formation at 30-150 AU for 1-3 Solar Mass Main Sequence Stars
• Collisional Cascades in Planetesimal Disks II. Embedded Planets
• Terrestrial Planet Formation I. The Transition from Oligarchic Growth to Chaotic Growth
• The Dynamics and Stability of Circumbinary Orbits
• Full Numerical Simulations of Catastrophic Small Body Collisions
• Impact Craters on Pluto and Charon Indicate a Deficit of Small Kuiper Belt Objects
• Merging Criteria for Giant Impacts of Protoplanets
• Direct N-body Simulations of Rubble Pile Collisions
• Convection in a volatile nitrogen-ice-rich layer drives Pluto's geological vigor
• The Frequency of Giant impacts on Earth-like Worlds
• Mean radius and shape of Pluto and Charon from New Horizons images
• A Hybrid N-body--Coagulation Code for Planet Formation
• Investigation of the Initial State of the Moon-Forming Disk: Bridging SPH Simulations and Hydrostatic Models
• Collisional Cascades in Planetesimal Disks I. Stellar Flybys
• A New Hybrid N-Body-Coagulation Code for the Formation of Gas Giant Planets
• The Small Satellites of Pluto as Observed by New Horizons
• The Pluto System After New Horizons
• Planet Formation in the Outer Solar System
• Warm Debris Disks Produced by Giant Impacts During Terrestrial Planet Formation
• Inefficient volatile loss from the Moon-forming disk: reconciling the giant impact hypothesis and a wet Moon
• Migration of planets embedded in a circumstellar disk
• Complete Tidal Evolution of Pluto-Charon
• Circumbinary Chaos: Using Pluto's Newest Moon to Constrain the Masses of Nix & Hydra
• An Analytic Theory for the Orbits of Circumbinary Planets
• Resolution Dependence of Disruptive Collisions between Planetesimals in the Gravity Regime
• The Formation of Pluto's Low Mass Satellites
• Variations on Debris Disks III. Collisional Cascades and Giant Impacts in the Terrestrial Zones of Solar-type Stars
• Rocky Planet Formation: Quick and Neat
• Migration of small moons in Saturn's rings
• Speciation and Dissolution of Hydrogen in the Proto-Lunar Disk
• On the Origin of Pluto's Small Satellites by Resonant Transport
• The Wide-Binary Origin of The Pluto-Charon System
• A Pluto-Charon Sonata: The Dynamical Architecture of the Circumbinary Satellite System
• Coagulation Calculations of Icy Planet Formation Around 0.1--0.5~\msun\ Stars: Super-Earths From Large Planetestimals
• A Pluto-Charon Concerto: An Impact on Charon as the Origin of the Small Satellites
• A Pluto--Charon Sonata: Dynamical Limits on the Masses of the Small Satellites
• Evolution of a ring around the Pluto-Charon binary
• On the existence of regular and irregular outer moons orbiting the Pluto-Charon system
• On the Estimation of Circumbinary Orbital Properties
• A Pluto-Charon Sonata III. Growth of Charon from a Circum-Pluto Ring of Debris
• Tidal evolution of the Pluto-Charon binary
• The Effect of Charon's Tidal Damping on the Orbits of Pluto's Three Moons

Cited by in corpus (5)

• From Pebbles and Planetesimals to Planets and Dust: the Protoplanetary Disk--Debris Disk Connection
• Past and present dynamics of the circumbinary moons in the Pluto-Charon system
• A Dynamical Systems Approach to the Theory of Circumbinary Orbits in the Circular Restricted Problem
• Orbit determination of the moons of the Pluto-Charon system
• A Pluto--Charon Sonata IV. Improved Constraints on the Dynamical Behavior and Masses of the Small Satellites