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arXiv · 1508.03350

Collisional Cascade Caclulations for Irregular Satellite Swarms in Fomalhaut b

Scott J. Kenyon·Benjamin C. Bromley
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Abstract

We describe an extensive suite of numerical calculations for the collisional evolution of irregular satellite swarms around 1--300 M-earth planets orbiting at 120 AU in the Fomalhaut system. For 10--100 M-earth planets, swarms with initial masses of roughly 1% of the planet mass have cross-sectional areas comparable to the observed cross-sectional area of Fomalhaut b. Among 30--300 M-earth planets, our calculations yield optically thick swarms of satellites for ages of 1-10 Myr. Observations with HST and ground-based AO instruments can constrain the frequency of these systems around stars in the beta Pic moving group and possibly other nearby associations of young stars.

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Scott J. Kenyon, Benjamin C. Bromley. 2015-08-13. Collisional Cascade Caclulations for Irregular Satellite Swarms in Fomalhaut b. https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x/811/1/60

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