Resilience of the Self-Gravity Instability to Precession
Abstract
Disks of eccentric orbits have a self-gravity instability that can explain Neptune detachment and argument of perihelion clustering observed in the extreme trans-Neptunian objects (Madigan & McCourt 2016 and Madigan et al. 2018). However, previous work on the instability has focused on a simplified system lacking the influences of the giant planets, an omission that could affect the instability. Here we emulate the presence of the giant planets by adding a quadrupole moment (J2) to the potential in systems otherwise susceptible to the self-gravity instability. We find that for a sufficiently large J2 the self-gravity instability is suppressed, and we derive how this critical J2 scales with disk mass, particle number, and initial orbital configuration to extrapolate our results to the solar system.
- Publication:
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AAS/Division of Dynamical Astronomy Meeting
- Pub Date:
- June 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019DDA....5020102Z