In-Situ Formation of the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt

TL;DR

The work tackles whether in-situ formation of the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt by the streaming instability can occur in a late, low-mass solar nebula given the belt's present mass and observed properties. It uses 3D simulations of gas and mm-sized dust with drag and self-gravity via the ATHENA code, modeling a smooth disk with a radial pressure profile and solids drifting through the 42-47 AU region as the gas mass decays to 2-5% of its initial value. They find about 1% of the drifting dust collapses into planetesimals of roughly 100 km in diameter, yielding a belt mass and size distribution similar to the observed CCKB, and the resulting clump spin naturally produces a predominantly prograde binary population (~80% prograde, 20% retrograde). The results argue against belt formation in dust-trapping bumps and support a late-stage, low-mass, in-situ SI pathway, while noting unresolved issues such as the belt edge near 47 AU and questions about the outer solar system's dynamical evolution.

Abstract

Cold Classical Kuiper belt objects (CCKBOs) are considered first-generation planetesimals that formed 42-47 au from the Sun and remained untouched since. Formation is thought to proceed by clumping of dust particles in protoplanetary disk gas by the streaming instability, followed by gravitational collapse. Previous calculations along these lines are inconsistent with the CCKB's supposedly pristine nature, because they assume orders of magnitude more solid mass than is actually present in the CCKB (a few thousandths of an Earth mass) and do not explain how to expel the >99% extra mass. Here we show from 3D numerical simulations of dust and gas that the total mass in CCKBOs, their characteristic sizes of ~100 km, and the relative proportion of prograde to retrograde binaries can all be reproduced at the tail end of the solar nebula's life, when it contained just 2-5% of its original (minimum-mass) gas. As a solar metallicity's worth of mm-sized solids drains out from 42-47 au from nebular headwinds, about 1% of the dust collapses into planetesimals that remain behind in the CCKB region. Binarity is guaranteed from a simple analytic estimate, confirmed numerically, of the spin angular momentum in clumps seeded by the streaming instability. We show that other formation scenarios, including trapping of dust within a gas pressure bump, fail to reproduce the low-mass CCKB. Outstanding problems are identified.