Planetary systems often host belts of debris, akin to the Solar System's asteroid and Kuiper belts. Observations frequently reveal intricate morphologies, including gapped or double-ringed structures. While such gaps are often attributed to unseen planets residing within them, an alternative explanation involves secular resonances in single- or multi-planet systems, where distant planets sculpt the disk structure. Crucially, many models neglect the disk's self-gravity.
In this work, we explore how incorporating the disk's mass alters this picture. We show that two low-eccentricity planets orbiting interior to a coplanar, self-gravitating disk can establish up to four secular apsidal resonances, inducing gap formation through eccentricity excitation. Using both analytical and numerical approaches from secular Laplace-Lagrange theory, we examine how the disk's mass modifies the eigenmodes of the two-planet system and shifts resonance locations compared to models with either a single planet or a massless disk. Finally, we discuss how these results provide new insights into the detection of unseen planets in observed gapped debris disks.
| Subject : | : | Poster |
| Topics | : | Planetary systems, architecture and dynamics |
| PDF version | : |  PDF version |
