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W. R. Ward (Southwest Research Institute)
For a massive planet that can open a gap in a gaseous disk, large scale migration is possible as the planet attempts to follow the disk's viscous evolution. Most treatments of planet orbital evolution by this sort of migration (type II) have been by numerical case studies and have not examined the process in the context of angular momentum conservation. Although numerical modeling can treat more complicated situations, an analytic approach can often yield complimentary insight into the problem. Here we present an simple mapping procedure that can predict the outcome of planet migration for a large variety of initial disk-planet configurations. The mapping constitutes an auxiliary tool that can provide a clearer understanding of the functional dependencies of the problem. Its predictions are compared with the results of more extensive numerical procedures, and the advantages and limitations of the method discussed.
This research was supported by NASA's Planetary Geology and Geophysics Program.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35 #4
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.