Circumstellar Disks and Outer Planet Formation

Abstract

The dust disk around Beta Pic must be produced by collision or by evaporation of orbiting Kuiper belt-like objects. Here we present the Orbiting-Evaporating-Bodies scenario in which the disk is a gigantic multi-cometary tail supplied by slowly evaporating bodies like Chiron. If dust is produced by evaporation, a planet with an eccentric orbit can explain the observed asymmetry of the disk, because the periastron distribution of the parent bodies are then expected to be non-axisymmetric. We investigate the consequence for the Kuiper belt-like objects of the formation and the migration of an outer planet like Neptune in Fernandez's scheme (1982). We find that bodies trapped in resonance with a migrating planet can significantly evaporate, producing a Beta Pic-like disk with similar characteristics like opening angle and asymmetry. We thus show that the Beta Pic disk can be a transient phenomenon. The circumstellar disks around main sequence stars can be the signature of the present formation and migration of outer planets.