Hilke Schlichting (UC Los Angeles)

The Kuiper Belt: Shedding light on Planet Formation & Collisional Evolution in Debris Disks

The Kuiper belt, located at the outskirts of our planetary system, is a remnant of the primordial Solar system where planet formation never reached completion. As such it provides a snapshot of earlier stages of planet formation and is therefore an ideal laboratory for testing planet formation theories. In my talk, I will focus on the size distribution of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). I will show that the large end of the size distribution contains many important clues concerning the growth of KBOs and planet formation in general, whereas the small end of the size distribution contains information of the KBOs effective strength and collisional evolution. I will present recent analytic and numerical results of the runaway growth phase during planet formation that successfully explain the size distribution of large KBOs. I will further show how we probe the size distribution of small KBOs by stellar occultations and will end by discussing the future of this field.