Dust resurgence in protoplanetary disks due to planetesimal-planet interactions

TL;DR

This paper proposes that planetesimal-planet interactions in protoplanetary disks can cause a resurgence of dust, explaining observed dust content patterns that challenge traditional steady decline models.

Contribution

It introduces a model where early planet formation dynamically stirs planetesimals, leading to increased dust production through impacts, reconciling observations with theoretical predictions.

Findings

Dust content increases from 1 to 2 Myr due to planetesimal impacts.

Model explains observed dust evolution in protoplanetary disks.

Second-generation dust production aligns with observed data.

Abstract

Observational data on the dust content of circumstellar disks show that the median dust content in disks around pre-main sequence stars in nearby star forming regions seem to increase from about 1 Myr to about 2 Myr, and then decline with time. This behaviour challenges the models where the small dust grains steadily decline by accumulating into larger bodies and drifting inwards on a short timescale (less than about 1 Myr). In this Letter we explore the possibility to reconcile this discrepancy in the framework of a model where the early formation of planets dynamically stirs the nearby planetesimals and causes high energy impacts between them, resulting in the production of second-generation dust. We show that the observed dust evolution can be naturally explained by this process within a suite of representative disk-planet architectures.