Dust Production from collisions in extrasolar planetary systems The inner Beta-Pictoris disc

Abstract

Dust particles observed in extrasolar planetary discs originate from undetectable km-sized bodies but this valuable information remains uninteresting if the theoretical link between grains and planetesimals is not properly known. We outline in this paper a numerical approach we developed in order to address this issue for the case of dust producing collisional cascades. The model is based on a particle-in-a-box method. We follow the size distribution of particles over eight orders of magnitude in radius taking into account fragmentation and cratering according to different prescriptions. A very particular attention is paid to the smallest particles, close to the radiation pressure induced cut-off size $R_{pr}$, which are placed on highly eccentric orbits by the stellar radiation pressure....(abstract continued in the uploaded paper)