Dynamical Evolutuion of Planetesimals driven by a Massive Planet: First Simulations

摘要

N-body simulations of the dynamical evolution of proto-planets embedded in a swarm of planetesimals and perturbed by a massive Jupiter-like planet were performed with the GRAPE-4 system recently installed in Marseille observatory. Initially both the protoplanets and the planetesimals are on circular and coplanar orbits distributed in a ring located within the orbital radius of the perturber. The first simulations show that, for a perturber significantly more massive than Jupiter, the system of the proto-planets becomes strongly unstable with the possibility of orbit crossing.