Born extra-eccentric: A broad spectrum of primordial configurations of the gas giants that match their present-day orbits

Abstract

In a recent paper we proposed that the giant planets' primordial orbits may have been eccentric (~0.05), and used a suite of dynamical simulations to show outcomes of the giant planet instability that are consistent with their present-day orbits. In this follow-up investigation, we present more comprehensive simulations incorporating superior particle resolution, longer integration times, and eliminating our prior means of artificially forcing instabilities to occur at specified times by shifting a planets' position in its orbit. While we find that the residual phase of planetary migration only minimally alters the the planets' ultimate eccentricities, our work uncovers several intriguing outcomes in realizations where Jupiter and Saturn are born with extremely large eccentricities (~0.10 and ~0.25, respectively). In successful simulations, the planets' orbits damp through interactions with the planetesimal disk prior to the instability, thus loosely replicating the initial conditions considered in our previous work. Our results therefore suggest an even wider range of plausible evolutionary pathways are capable of replicating Jupiter and Saturn's modern orbital architecture.

12 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in Icarus

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Explaining Mercury via a single giant impact is highly unlikely
• Migration of pairs of giant planets in low-viscosity discs
• Terrestrial planet and asteroid belt formation by Jupiter-Saturn chaotic excitation
• Dynamical evolution of a self-gravitating planetesimal disk in the distant trans-Neptunian region
• Revised Properties and Dynamical History for the HD 17156 System
• Study of Migration of Giant Planets and Formation of Populations of Distant Trans-Neptunian Objects in the Nice Model
• Asteroids fail to retain cometary impact signatures
• Instability from high-order resonant chains in wide-separation massive planet systems