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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 9: Astrophysics I

EP 9.1: Hauptvortrag

Freitag, 3. September 2021, 11:00–11:30, H5

Exo-Kuiper Belts in Planetary Systems — •Alexander Krivov — AIU, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany

While planets are the most treasured outcome of the planet formation process, they are not the sole component of planetary systems. Another component is debris disks, which are belts of comets and asteroids akin to the Kuiper belt and asteroid belt of the Solar system. These belts also include dust that is produced by mutual collisions of comets and asteroids and other disintegration processes. It is thermal emission and stellar light scattered by that dust that make debris disks observable. This talk focusses on the most prominent, outer components of debris disks, which are considered analogous to the Kuiper belt. These ``exo-Kuiper belts'' are found around nearby stars nearly as frequently as planets, and more than 150 of them have been imaged by now. To illustrate how exo-Kuiper belts help us understand planetary systems, I will concentrate on two particular aspects. First, exo-Kuiper belts are sculpted and structured by planets in the systems. While possibilities of direct exoplanet detection still remain very limited, the debris disk structure seen in the resolved images can be used to pinpoint the perturbing planets and can also tell us where there are no planets. Second, being descendants of protoplanetary disks, exo-Kuiper belts serve as sensitive tracers of formation and evolution history of planetary systems. Interpreting debris disk observations with the help of models allows one, for instance, to constrain mechanisms of planetesimal accretion, formation of planets, and their subsequent dynamical evolution (scattering, migration) in the past.