2007/07/09 by Marc J. Kuchner, M. Kuchner, Kuchner, M. +12 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #FOS: Physical sciences #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0707.1280
ExoPlanet Task Force White Paper
arxiv created 2007/07/09 · openalex publication_date 2007/07/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The inner Solar System contains a cloud of small (1-100 micron) dust grains created when small bodies-asteroids, comets, and Kuiper belt objects-collide and outgas. This dust cloud, the zodiacal cloud probably has extrasolar analogs, exozodiacal clouds. Exozodiacal clouds are related to debris disks, clouds of rocks and dust orbiting main sequence stars thought to represent the debris left over from planet formation. Some debris disks appear to contain distinct inner clouds that could be considered massive exozodiacal clouds (e.g. Koerner et al. 1998, Absil et al. 2006). This white paper addresses the need for future theoretical work on the dynamics of exozodiacal clouds. This theoretical work should help us discover new planets and understand exozodiacal clouds as astrophysical noise. So far, observations of nearby stars have not provided good constraints on the structures of exozodiacal clouds. But future observations probably will demand a better theoretical understanding of these systems.