Journal
PLANETARY SCIENCE JOURNAL
Volume 1, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP Publishing Ltd
DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ab9d80
Keywords
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Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [AST-1515804, AST-1615555, AST-1138766, AST-1536171]
- Department of Energy [DE-SC0007901]
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NNX17AF21G]
- NSF [DGE 1256260]
- U.S. Department of Energy
- U.S. National Science Foundation
- Ministry of Science and Education of Spain
- Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom
- Higher Education Funding Council for England
- National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago
- Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University
- Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas AM University
- Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos
- Fundacao Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico
- Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovacao
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Argonne National Laboratory
- University of California at Santa Cruz
- University of Cambridge
- Centro de Investigaciones Energeticas, Medioambientales y Tecnologicas-Madrid
- University of Chicago
- University College London
- DES-Brazil Consortium
- University of Edinburgh
- Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai (IEEC/CSIC)
- Institut de Fisica d'Altes Energies
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Ludwig-Maximilians Universitaet Munchen
- associated Excellence Cluster Universe
- University of Michigan
- National Optical Astronomy Observatory
- University of Nottingham
- Ohio State University
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of Portsmouth
- SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
- Stanford University
- University of Sussex
- Texas AM University
- OzDES Membership Consortium
- National Science Foundation
- MINECO [AYA2015-71825, ESP2015-66861, FPA2015-68048, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, MDM-2015-0509]
- European Union
- CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya
- European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) including ERC grant [240672, 291329, 306478]
- Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) [CE110001020]
- Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciencia e Tecnologia (INCT) e-Universe (CNPq) [465376/2014-2]
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics [DE-AC02-07CH11359]
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We test whether the population of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (eTNOs) detected in the first four years of the Dark Energy Survey (DES Y4) data exhibit azimuthal asymmetries that might be evidence of gravitational perturbations from an unseen super-Earth in a distant orbit. By rotating the orbits of the detected eTNOs, we construct a synthetic population that, when subject to the DES selection function, reproduces the detected distribution of eTNOs in the orbital elements a, e, and i as well as absolute magnitude H, but has uniform distributions in mean anomaly M, longitude of ascending node Omega, and argument of perihelion omega. We then compare the detected distributions in each of Omega, omega, and the longitude of perihelion (omega) over bar equivalent to Omega + omega to those expected from the isotropic population, using Kuiper's variant of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. The three angles are tested for each of four definitions of the eTNO population, choosing among a > (150, 250) au and perihelion q > (30, 37) au. These choices yield 3-7 eTNOs in the DES Y4 sample. Among the 12 total tests, two have the likelihood of drawing the observed angles from the isotropic population at p < 0.03. The three detections at a > 250 and q > 37 au and the four detections at a > 250 and q > 30 au have a omega distribution with p asymptotic to 0.03 coming from the isotropic construction, but this is not strong evidence of anisotropy given the 12 different tests. The DES data taken on their own are thus consistent with azimuthal isotropy and do not require a Planet 9 hypothesis. The limited sky coverage and object count mean, however, that the DES data by no means falsify this hypothesis.
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