Shaping HR8799’s outer dust belt with an unseen planet

HR8799 is a benchmark system for direct imaging studies. It hosts two debris belts, which lie internally and externally to four giant planets. This paper considers how the four known planets and a possible fifth planet interact with the external population of debris through N-body simulations. We find that when only the known planets are included, the inner edge of the outer belt predicted by our simulations is much closer to the outermost planet than recent ALMA observations suggest. We subsequently include a fifth planet in our simulations with a range of masses and semimajor axes, which is external to the outermost known planet. We find that a fifth planet with a mass and semimajor axis of 0.1M(J) and 138 au predicts an outer belt that agrees well with ALMA observations, whilst remaining stable for the lifetime of HR8799 and lying below current direct imaging detection thresholds. We also consider whether inward scattering of material from the outer belt can input a significant amount of mass into the inner belt. We find that for the current age of HR8799, only similar to 1 per cent of the mass-loss rate of the inner disc can be replenished by inward scattering. However, we find that the higher rate of inward scattering during the first similar to 10 Myr of HR8799 would be expected to cause warm dust emission at a level similar to that currently observed, which may provide an explanation for such bright emission in other systems at similar to 10 Myr ages.