FORMING THE COLD CLASSICAL KUIPER BELT IN A LIGHT DISK

A Collisional Family in the Classical Kuiper Belt

The dynamical evolution of Classical Kuiper Belt Objects (CKBOs) divides into two parts, according to the secular theory of test particle orbits. The first part is a forced oscillation driven by the planets, while the second part is a free oscillation whose amplitude is determined by the initial orbit of the test particle. We extract the free orbital inclinations and free orbital eccentricities...

The Warped Plane of the Classical Kuiper Belt

By numerically integrating the orbits of the giant planets and of test particles over a period of four billion years, we follow the evolution of the location of the midplane of the Kuiper belt. The Classical Kuiper belt conforms to a warped sheet that precesses with a 1.9 Myr period. The present-day location of the Kuiper belt plane can be computed using linear secular perturbation theory: the ...

Observational Limits on a Distant Cold Kuiper Belt

Almost all of the > 600 known Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) have been discovered within 50 AU of the Sun. One possible explanation for the observed lack of KBOs beyond 50 AU is that the distant Kuiper belt is dynamically very cold, and thus thin enough on the sky to have slipped between previous deep survey fields. We have completed a survey designed to search for a dynamically cold distant Kuiper...

Color-inclination Relation of the Classical Kuiper Belt Objects

We re-examine the correlation between the colors and the inclinations of the Classical Kuiper Belt Objects (CKBOs) with an enlarged sample of optical measurements. The correlation is strong (ρ = −0.7) and highly significant (> 8σ) in the range 0◦ − 34◦. Nonetheless, the optical colors are independent of inclination below ≈ 12◦, showing no evidence for a break at the reported boundary between th...

The Kuiper Belt