Cosmology Seminar Announcement Prof. Eugene Chiang UC Berkeley " Resonant Rings: The Kuiper Belt and Beyond " Date: Thursday, March 17, 2005 Time: 12:10 pm 432 Physics Abstract: Circumstellar disks not only furnish the raw material from which planets form, but also record, via their dynamical structures, the history of events during the era of planet formation. I will review the history encoded within the Kuiper belt. I will describe how the observed pattern of resonance occupation informs our understanding of planetary migration, highlighting the diagnostic power of the N:1 resonance. While migration can explain most of the observed resonant architecture, it fails in the special case of the Trojan 1:1 resonance. I will formulate a theory for the origin of Neptune Trojans in which the resonance furnishes a testbed, in miniature, for ideas of planetary growth by accretion of small particles. When appropriate, I will alight upon extra-solar examples of resonance, including pairs of extra-solar planets, debris disks surrounding main-sequence stars, and the rigid ring encircling the famously puzzling pre-main-sequence T Tauri star, KH 15D.

E-Mail: echiang@astron.berkeley.edu
Web Page: http://astron.berkeley.edu/~echiang/