FLASH Talks: Antranik Sefilian (UA/Steward) & TBA()


Friday, 28 February 2025 noon — 1 p.m. MST

Your time: Friday, 28 February 2025 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm (UTC +00:00)

NOIRLab Headquarters | 950 North Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719

FLASH Talks

Antranik Sefilian (UA/Steward)
Planet-induced Stirring of Debris Disks: The Role of Disk Self-gravity

Debris disks, analogous to our Solar System’s asteroid and Kuiper belts, are ubiquitous around main-sequence stars. Since dust grains are short-lived, their sustained presence in debris disks is thought to require dynamical excitation, i.e., “stirring”, of a massive reservoir of large planetesimals, resulting in a collisional cascade that continually supplies fresh dust. A commonly considered stirring mechanism is that due to interactions with yet-unseen planets. Such models, however, ignore the self-gravitational effects of the disks themselves, assuming debris disks are massless. This talk presents novel findings exploring scenarios where the disk’s (self-)gravitational effects hinder planet-induced stirring. I will present results showing that the disk gravity can strongly suppress planetesimal eccentricities and collisional velocities throughout the disk, sometimes by more than an order of magnitude when compared to massless disk models. These findings not only have significant implications for planetary inferences within debris-bearing systems, but also provide valuable constraints on the total masses of debris disks.

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