An estimate of resident time of the Oort Cloud new comets in planetary region

TL;DR

This study combines semi-analytic and numerical models to estimate the average duration of new comets from the Oort Cloud in the planetary region, revealing a typical resident time of about 100 million years.

Contribution

It introduces a hybrid modeling approach to simulate the dynamical evolution of Oort Cloud comets, highlighting the impact of planetary perturbations and initial orbital inclinations.

Findings

Average resident time of comets in planetary region is about 10^8 years.

The planet barrier effect is significant for comets with small initial inclinations.

Transient transitions of comets into other small body populations are discussed.

Abstract

We describe the result of our numerical orbit simulation which traces dynamical evolution of new comets coming from the Oort Cloud. We combine two dynamical models for this purpose. The first one is semi-analytic, and it models an evolving comet cloud under galactic tide and encounters with nearby stars. The second one numerically deals with planetary perturbation in the planetary region. Although our study does not include physical effects such as fading or disintegration of comets, we found that typical dynamical resident time of the comets in the planetary region is about $10^8$ years. We also found that the so-called planet barrier works when the initial orbital inclination of the comets is small. A numerical result concerning the temporary transition of the comets into other small body populations such as transneptunian objects or Centaurs is discussed.