Inclination Excitation of Solar System Debris Disk Due to Stellar Flybys

Most stars form in clusters where relatively close encounters with other stars are common and can leave imprints on the orbital architecture of planetary systems. In this paper, we investigate the inclination excitation of debris disk particles due to such stellar encounters. We derive an analytical expression that describes inclination excitation in the hierarchical limit where the stellar flyby is distant. We then obtain numerical results for the corresponding particle inclination distribution in the nonhierarchical regime using a large ensemble ofN-body simulations. For encounters with expected parameters, we find that the bulk inclination of the disk particles remains low. However, a distinct high-inclination population is produced by prograde stellar encounters for particles with final pericenter distances above 50 au. The maximum extenti(t)of the inclination distribution scales with the inclination of the encounter