A gap-sharing planet pair shaping the crescent in HD 163296: a disk sculpted by a resonant chain

TL;DR

This paper models the HD 163296 disk as shaped by a resonant chain of four planets, explaining observed crescent and gap structures through planet-disk interactions and dust trapping at Lagrange points.

Contribution

It introduces a global disk model with four planets in a 1:2:4 Laplace resonance, explaining crescent and gap features and constraining planet positions.

Findings

Crescent corresponds to dust trapped at the L5 point of the outer planet.

A resonant chain of four planets explains the disk's features.

The model matches both dust and gas observations.

Abstract

ALMA observations of the disk around HD 163296 have resolved a crescent-shape substructure at around 55 au, inside and off-center from a gap in the dust that extends from 38 au to 62 au. In this work we propose that both the crescent and the dust rings are caused by a compact pair (period ratio $\simeq 4:3$) of sub-Saturn-mass planets inside the gap, with the crescent corresponding to dust trapped at the $L_5$ Lagrange point of the outer planet. This interpretation also reproduces well the gap in the gas recently measured from the CO observations, which is shallower than what is expected in a model where the gap is carved by a single planet. Building on previous works arguing for outer planets at $\approx 86$ and $\approx 137$ au, we provide with a global model of the disk that best reproduces the data and show that all four planets may fall into a long resonant chain, with the outer three planets in a 1:2:4 Laplace resonance. We show that this configuration is not only an expected outcome from disk-planet interaction in this system, but it can also help constraining the radial and angular position of the planet candidates using three-body resonances.