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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2011
ϵ Eridani hosts one known inner planet and an outer Kuiper belt analog. Further, Spitzer/IRS measurements indicate that warm dust is present at distances as close as a few AU from the star. Its origin is puzzling, since an “asteroid belt” that could produce this dust would be unstable because of the inner planet. We tested a hypothesis that the observed warm dust is generated by collisions in the outer belt and is transported inward by P-R drag and strong stellar winds. With numerical simulation we investigated how the dust streams from the outer ring into the inner system, and calculated the thermal emission of the dust. We show that the observed warm dust can indeed stem from the outer belt. Our models reproduce the shape and magnitude of the observed SED from mid-IR to sub-mm wavelengths, as well as the Spitzer/MIPS radial brightness profiles.