Evolving Debris Disks: Connecting Extrasolar Disk Observations to those of the Solar System.
First Author:
Andrew Shannon
Email: shannon AT astro.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
50 St. George Street Room 101
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3H4
Coauthors:
Wu, Yanqin, University of Toronto
Abstract
We model debris disk evolution and compare to observed systems to probe the primordial size distribution of medium-sized planetesimals. Evolutionary models of debris disks tend to produce similar luminosities for plausible initial number-size distributions, however, the differing rates of evolution allow access to the number-size distribution by modeling the population evolution. Using a simple model with reasonable assumptions and the available relevant dataset, we find that medium-size bodies (~100 m - ~100 km) appear to fit a differential power law distribution with a slope between -3.5 and -4.0.
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