Planet signatures and Size Segregation in Debris Discs

Extract

The response of a debris disc to a planetary perturber is the result of the complex interplay between gravitational effects, grain collisions and stellar radiation pressure (Stark & Kuchner (2009). We investigate to what extent this response can depart from the pure gravitational case when including grain collisional production and radiation pressure. We use the DyCoSS code (Thébault (2012), designed to study the coupled effect of collisions and dynamics for systems at steady state with one perturbing body. We focus on two outcomes: the 2D surface density profile of the disc+planet system, and the way the Particle Size Distribution (PSD) is spatially segregated within the disc. We consider two set-ups: 1) a narrow ring with an exterior “shepherding” planet, and 2) an extended disc in which a planet is embedded. For each case, the planet mass and orbit are explored as free parameters, and an unperturbed “no-planet” case is also considered. Another parameter is the disc's collisional activity, as parameterized by its optical depth τ.