A Study of the Dynamics of Dust from the Kuiper Belt: Spatial Distribution and Spectral Energy Distribution

Abstract

The dust produced in the Kuiper belt (KB) spreads throughout the solar system, forming a dust disk. We numerically model the orbital evolution of KB dust and estimate its equilibrium spatial distribution and its brightness and spectral energy distribution (SED) assuming graybody absoption and emission by the dust grains. We show that the planets modify the KB disk SED, so potentially we can infer the presence of planets in spatially unresolved debris disks by studying the shape of their SEDs. We point out that there are inherent uncertainties in the prediction of structure in the dust disk, owing to the chaotic dynamics of dust orbital evolution imposed by resonant gravitational perturbations of the planets.