101 research outputs found
Trapping Low-mass Planets at the Inner Edge of the Protostellar Disk
The formation of multiple close-in low-mass exoplanets is still a mystery. The challenge is to build a system wherein the outermost planet is beyond 0.2 au from the star. Here, we investigate how the prescription for type I planet migration affects the ability to trap multiple planets in a resonant chain near the inner edge of the protostellar disk. A sharp edge modeled as a hyperbolic tangent function coupled with supersonic corrections to the classical type I migration torques results in the innermost planets being pushed inside the cavity through resonant interaction with farther planets because migration is starward at slightly supersonic eccentricities. Planets below a few Earth masses are generally trapped in a resonant chain with the outermost planet near the disk edge, but long-Term stability is not guaranteed. For more massive planets the migration is so fast that the eccentricity of the innermost resonant pair is excited to highly supersonic levels due to decreased damping on the innermost planet as it is pushed inside the cavity; collisions frequently occur, and the system consists of one or two intermediate-mass planets residing closer to the star than the disk's inner edge. We found a neat pileup of resonant planets outside the disk edge only if the corotation torque does not rapidly diminish at high eccentricity. We call for detailed studies on planet migration near the disk's inner edge, which is still uncertain, and for an improved understanding of eccentricity damping and disk torques in the supersonic regime.</p
Origin and Dynamical Evolution of Neptune Trojans - II: Long Term Evolution
We present results examining the fate of the Trojan clouds produced in our
previous work. We find that the stability of Neptunian Trojans seems to be
strongly correlated to their initial post-migration orbital elements, with
those objects that survive as Trojans for billions of years displaying
negligible orbital evolution. The great majority of these survivors began the
integrations with small eccentricities (e < 0.2) and small libration amplitudes
(A < 30 - 40{\deg}). The survival rate of "pre-formed" Neptunian Trojans (which
in general survived on dynamically cold orbits (e < 0.1, i < 5 - 10{\deg}))
varied between ~5 and 70%. By contrast, the survival rate of "captured" Trojans
(on final orbits spread across a larger region of e-i element space) were
markedly lower, ranging between 1 and 10% after 4 Gyr. Taken in concert with
our earlier work, we note that planetary formation scenarios which involve the
slow migration (a few tens of millions of years) of Neptune from an initial
planetary architecture that is both resonant and compact (aN < 18 AU) provide
the most promising fit of those we considered to the observed Trojan
population. In such scenarios, we find that the current day Trojan population
would number ~1% of that which was present at the end of the planet's
migration, with the bulk being sourced from captured, rather than pre-formed
objects. We note, however, that even those scenarios still fail to reproduce
the currently observed portion of the Neptune Trojan population moving on
orbits with e 20{\deg}. Dynamical integrations of the currently
observed Trojans show that five out of the seven are dynamically stable on 4
Gyr timescales, while 2001 QR322, exhibits significant dynamical instability.
The seventh Trojan object, 2008 LC18, has such large orbital uncertainties that
only future studies will be able to determine its stability.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS (The abstract
was shortened. Original version can be found in the pdf file
Dynamics of two planets in co-orbital motion
We study the stability regions and families of periodic orbits of two planets
locked in a co-orbital configuration. We consider different ratios of planetary
masses and orbital eccentricities, also we assume that both planets share the
same orbital plane. Initially we perform numerical simulations over a grid of
osculating initial conditions to map the regions of stable/chaotic motion and
identify equilibrium solutions. These results are later analyzed in more detail
using a semi-analytical model. Apart from the well known quasi-satellite (QS)
orbits and the classical equilibrium Lagrangian points L4 and L5, we also find
a new regime of asymmetric periodic solutions. For low eccentricities these are
located at , where \sigma is
the difference in mean longitudes and \Delta\omega is the difference in
longitudes of pericenter. The position of these Anti-Lagrangian solutions
changes with the mass ratio and the orbital eccentricities, and are found for
eccentricities as high as ~ 0.7. Finally, we also applied a slow mass variation
to one of the planets, and analyzed its effect on an initially asymmetric
periodic orbit. We found that the resonant solution is preserved as long as the
mass variation is adiabatic, with practically no change in the equilibrium
values of the angles.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figure
Cathodoluminescence studies of chevron features in semi-polar (1122) InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well structures
Epitaxial overgrowth of semi-polar III-nitride layers and devices often leads to arrowhead-shaped surface features, referred to as chevrons. We report on a study into the optical, structural, and electrical properties of these features occurring in two very different semi-polar structures, a blue-emitting multiple quantum well structure, and an amber-emitting light-emitting diode. Cathodoluminescence (CL) hyperspectral imaging has highlighted shifts in their emission energy, occurring in the region of the chevron. These variations are due to different semi-polar planes introduced in the chevron arms resulting in a lack of uniformity in the InN incorporation across samples, and the disruption of the structure which could cause a narrowing of the quantum wells (QWs) in this region. Atomic force microscopy has revealed that chevrons can penetrate over 150 nm into the sample and quench light emission from the active layers. The dominance of non-radiative recombination in the chevron region was exposed by simultaneous measurement of CL and the electron beam-induced current. Overall, these results provide an overview of the nature and impact of chevrons on the luminescence of semi-polar devices
Formation and Dynamical Evolution of the Neptune Trojans - the Influence of the Initial Solar System Architecture
In this work, we investigate the dynamical stability of pre-formed Neptune
Trojans under the gravitational influence of the four giant planets in compact
planetary architectures, over 10 Myr. In our modelling, the initial orbital
locations of Uranus and Neptune (aN) were varied to produce systems in which
those planets moved on non-resonant orbits, or in which they lay in their
mutual 1:2, 2:3 and 3:4 mean-motion resonances (MMRs). In total, 420
simulations were carried out, examining 42 different architectures, with a
total of 840000 particles across all runs. In the non-resonant cases, the
Trojans suffered only moderate levels of dynamical erosion, with the most
compact systems (those with aN less than or equal 18 AU) losing around 50% of
their Trojans by the end of the integrations. In the 2:3 and 3:4 MMR scenarios,
however, dynamical erosion was much higher with depletion rates typically
greater than 66% and total depletion in the most compact systems. The 1:2
resonant scenarios featured disruption on levels intermediate between the
non-resonant cases and other resonant scenarios, with depletion rates of the
order of tens of percent. Overall, the great majority of plausible
pre-migration planetary architectures resulted in severe levels of depletion of
the Neptunian Trojan clouds. In particular, if Uranus and Neptune formed near
their mutual 2:3 or 3:4 MMR and at heliocentric distances within 18 AU (as
favoured by recent studies), we found that the great majority of pre-formed
Trojans would have been lost prior to Neptune's migration. This strengthens the
case for the great bulk of the current Neptunian Trojan population having been
captured during that migration.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures, MNRAS (in press). Abstract slightly reduced in
size, but in original form in the PDF fil
Origin and Dynamical Evolution of Neptune Trojans - I: Formation and Planetary Migration
We present the results of detailed dynamical simulations of the effect of the
migration of the four giant planets on both the transport of pre-formed Neptune
Trojans, and the capture of new Trojans from a trans-Neptunian disk. We find
that scenarios involving the slow migration of Neptune over a large distance
(50Myr to migrate from 18.1AU to its current location) provide the best match
to the properties of the known Trojans. Scenarios with faster migration (5Myr),
and those in which Neptune migrates from 23.1AU to its current location, fail
to adequately reproduce the current day Trojan population. Scenarios which
avoid disruptive perturbation events between Uranus and Neptune fail to yield
any significant excitation of pre-formed Trojans (transported with efficiencies
between 30 and 98% whilst maintaining the dynamically cold nature of these
objects). Conversely, scenarios with periods of strong Uranus-Neptune
perturbation lead to the almost complete loss of such pre-formed objects. In
these cases, a small fraction (~0.15%) of these escaped objects are later
recaptured as Trojans prior to the end of migration, with a wide range of
eccentricities (<0.35) and inclinations (<40 deg). In all scenarios (including
those with such disruptive interaction between Uranus and Neptune) the capture
of objects from the trans-Neptunian disk (through which Neptune migrates) is
achieved with efficiencies between ~0.1 and ~1%. The captured Trojans display a
wide range of inclinations (<40 deg for slow migration, and <20 deg for rapid
migration) and eccentricities (<0.35), and we conclude that, given the vast
amount of material which undoubtedly formed beyond the orbit of Neptune, such
captured objects may be sufficient to explain the entire Neptune Trojan
population. (Shortened version)Comment: 25 pages, 6 figure
Easily retrievable objects among the NEO population
Asteroids and comets are of strategic importance for science in an effort to understand the formation, evolution and composition of the Solar System. Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are of particular interest because of their accessibility from Earth, but also because of their speculated wealth of material resources. The exploitation of these resources has long been discussed as a means to lower the cost of future space endeavours. In this paper, we consider the currently known NEO population and define a family of so-called Easily Retrievable Objects (EROs), objects that can be transported from accessible heliocentric orbits into the Earth’s neighbourhood at affordable costs. The asteroid retrieval transfers are sought from the continuum of low energy transfers enabled by the dynamics of invariant manifolds; specifically, the retrieval transfers target planar, vertical Lyapunov and halo orbit families associated with the collinear equilibrium points of the Sun-Earth Circular Restricted Three Body problem. The judicious use of these dynamical features provides the best opportunity to find extremely low energy Earth transfers for asteroid material. A catalogue of asteroid retrieval candidates is then presented. Despite the highly incomplete census of very small asteroids, the ERO catalogue can already be populated with 12 different objects retrievable with less than 500 m/s of Δv. Moreover, the approach proposed represents a robust search and ranking methodology for future retrieval candidates that can be automatically applied to the growing survey of NEOs
Discovery and Selection of Hepatitis B Virus-Derived T Cell Epitopes for Global Immunotherapy Based on Viral Indispensability, Conservation, and HLA-Binding Strength
Immunotherapy represents an attractive option for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. The HBV proteins polymerase (Pol) and HBx are of special interest for antigen-specific immunotherapy because they are essential for viral replication and have been associated with viral control (Pol) or are still expressed upon viral DNA integration (HBx). Here, we scored all currently described HBx- and Pol-derived epitope sequences for viral indispensability and conservation across all HBV genotypes. This yielded 7 HBx-derived and 26 Po
2008 LC18: a potentially unstable Neptune Trojan
The recent discovery of the first Neptune Trojan at the planet's trailing
(L5) Lagrange point, 2008 LC18, offers an opportunity to confirm the formation
mechanism of a member of this important tracer population for the Solar
system's dynamical history. We tested the stability of 2008 LC18's orbit
through a detailed dynamical study, using test particles spread across the
orbital uncertainties in a, e, i and {\Omega}. This showed that the wide
uncertainties of the published orbit span regions of both extreme dynamical
instability, with lifetimes 1 Gyr
lifetimes). The stability of 2008 LC18's clones is greatly dependent on their
semi-major axis and only weakly correlated with their eccentricity. Test
particles on orbits with an initial semi-major axis less than 29.91 AU have
dynamical half-lives shorter than 100 Myr; in contrast, particles with an
initial semi-major axis greater than 29.91 AU exhibit such strong dynamical
stability that almost all are retained over the 1 Gyr of our simulations. More
observations of this object are necessary to improve the orbit. If 2008 LC18 is
in the unstable region, then our simulations imply that it is either a
temporary Trojan capture, or a representative of a slowly decaying Trojan
population (like its sibling the L4 Neptunian Trojan 2001 QR322), and that it
may not be primordial. Alternatively, if the orbit falls into the larger,
stable region, then 2008 LC18 is a primordial member of the highly stable and
highly inclined component of the Neptune Trojan population, joining 2005 TN53
and 2007 VL305. We attempted to recover 2008 LC18 using the 2.3m telescope at
Siding Spring Observatory to provide this astrometry, but were unsuccessful due
to the high stellar density of its current sky location near the galactic
centre. The recovery of this object will require a telescope in the 8m class.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in Monthly
Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ
Saving Super-Earths:Interplay between Pebble Accretion and Type I Migration
Overcoming type I migration and preventing low-mass planets from spiralling into the central star is a long-studied topic. It is well known that outward migration is possible in viscously heated disks relatively close to the central star because the entropy gradient can be sufficiently steep for the positive corotation torque to overcome the negative Lindblad torque. Yet efficiently trapping planets in this region remains elusive. Here we study disk conditions that yield outward migration for low-mass planets under specific planet migration prescriptions. In a steady-state disk model with a constant α-viscosity, outward migration is only possible when the negative temperature gradient exceeds ∼0.87. We derive an implicit relation for the highest mass at which outward migration is possible as a function of viscosity and disk scale height. We apply these criteria, using a simple power-law disk model, to planets that have reached their pebble isolation mass after an episode of rapid accretion. It is possible to trap planets with the pebble isolation mass farther than the inner edge of the disk provided that α crit 0.004 for disks older than 1 Myr. In very young disks, the high temperature causes the planets to grow to masses exceeding the maximum for outward migration. As the disk evolves, these more massive planets often reach the central star, generally only toward the end of the disk lifetime. Saving super-Earths is therefore a delicate interplay between disk viscosity, the opacity profile, and the temperature gradient in the viscously heated inner disk
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