Signatures of Planets in Spatially Unresolved Disks

Abstract

Main sequence stars are commonly surrounded by debris disks, composed of cold dust continuously replenished by a reservoir of undetected dust-producing planetesimals. In a planetary system with a belt of planetesimals (like the Solar System's Kuiper Belt) and one or more interior giant planets, the trapping of dust particles in the mean motion resonances with the planets can create structure in the dust disk, as the particles accumulate at certain semimajor axes. Sufficiently massive planets may also scatter and eject dust particles out of a planetary system, creating a dust depleted region inside the orbit of the planet. In anticipation of future observations of spatially unresolved debris disks with the Spitzer Space Telescope, we are interested in studying how the structure carved by planets affects the shape of the disk's spectral energy distribution (SED), and consequently if the SED can be used to infer the presence of planets. We numerically calculate the equilibrium spatial density distributions and SEDs of dust disks originated by a belt of planetesimals in the presence of interior giant planets in different planetary configurations, and for a representative sample of chemical compositions. The dynamical models are necessary to estimate the enhancement of particles near the mean motion resonances with the planets, and to determine how many particles drift inside the planet's orbit. Based on the SEDs and predicted $Spitzer$ colors we discuss what types of planetary systems can be distinguishable from one another and the main parameter degeneracies in the model SEDs.

40 pages (pre-print form), including 16 figures. Published in ApJ 2005

References in corpus (2)

• Dynamical models of Kuiper Belt dust in the inner and outer Solar System
• New debris disk candidates: 24 micron stellar excesses at 100 Myr

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• On Grain Dynamics in Debris Discs: Continuous Outward Flows and Embedded Planets
• Extra-Solar Kuiper Belt Dust Disks
• Clumps and Axisymmetric Features in Debris Discs
• On the Solar System-Debris Disk Connecction
• Collisional parameters of planetesimal belts, precursor of debris disks, perturbed by a nearby giant planet