The Formation of the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt by a Short Range Transport Mechanism

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new short-range transport mechanism to explain the formation and distribution of the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt and related objects, suggesting they originated from the outer primordial disk and were transported inward.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scenario where Kuiper Belt objects formed in the outer disk and were transported inward, accounting for their current distribution and characteristics.

Findings

The proposed mechanism explains the distribution of cold classical and scattered Kuiper Belt objects.

The Kuiper Belt was formed about 4 au inside its current location.

The initial mass of the Kuiper Belt was 20 to 100 times greater than today.

Abstract

The Classical Kuiper Belt is populated by a group of objects with low inclination orbits, reddish colors and usually belonging to a binary system. This so called Cold Classical Kuiper Belt is considered to have been formed in situ from primordial ice pebbles that coagulated into planetesimals hundreds of kilometers in diameter. According to this scenario, the accretion of pebbles into large planetesimals would have occurred through the streaming instability mechanism that would be effective in the primordial Solar System disk of gas and solids. Nevertheless other objects with the same color characteristics as those found in the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt can be encountered also past the 2:1 mean motion resonance with Neptune as scattered or detached objects. Here I propose a mechanism that can account for both the cold Classical Kuiper Belt objects and other reddish objects outside the Classical Kuiper Belt. According to the proposed scenario, reddish objects were primordially in the outer portion of the planetesimal disk which was however truncated somewhere below 42 au. In this manner the cold Classical Kuiper Belt and its scattered / detached counterpart were respectively transported outwards by a short range or slightly scattered to their present locations. Resonant objects were also formed by the same process. This mechanism is aimed at explaining the distribution of all objects that share the same color characteristics as coming from a common origin in the outer borders of the primordial planetesimal disk. According to the scenario here proposed the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt would have been formed around 4 au inside its present location with a total mass 20 to 100 times as large as its present value.