Capturing Trojans and Irregular Satellites - the key required to unlock planetary migration
Jonathan Horner, F. Elliott Koch, Patryk Sofia Lykawka

TL;DR
This study investigates how giant planet migration influenced small body populations in the Solar system, showing that smooth migration scenarios can explain the observed Trojans and irregular satellites, challenging previous assumptions.
Contribution
It provides the first results demonstrating that smooth planetary migration can account for the current small body populations, contrasting with chaotic migration models.
Findings
Smooth migration scenarios can reproduce observed small body populations.
Chaotic initial configurations are not necessary to explain Trojans and irregular satellites.
Migration sculpts the asteroid belt and trans-Neptunian region.
Abstract
It is now accepted that the Solar system's youth was a dynamic and chaotic time. The giant planets migrated significant distances to reach their current locations, and evidence of that migration's influence on the Solar system abounds. That migration's pace, and the distance over which it occurred, is still heavily debated. Some models feature systems in which the giant planets were initially in an extremely compact configuration, in which Uranus and Neptune are chaotically scattered into the outer Solar system. Others feature architectures that were initially more relaxed, and smoother, more sedate migration. To determine which of these scenarios best represents the formation of our Solar system, we must turn to the structure of the system's small body populations, in which the scars of that migration are still clearly visible. We present the first results of a program investigating…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstro and Planetary Science · Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
