Numerical Simulations of Collisional Cascades at the Roche Limits of White Dwarf Stars
Numerical Simulations of Collisional Cascades at the Roche Limits of White Dwarf Stars
We consider the long-term collisional and dynamical evolution of solid material orbiting in a narrow annulus near the Roche limit of a white dwarf. With orbital velocities of 300 km/sec, systems of solids with initial eccentricity $e \gtrsim 10^{-3}$ generate a collisional cascade where objects with radii $r \lesssim$ 100--300 …