Direct imaging searches have begun to detect planetary
and brown dwarf companions and to place constraints
on the presence of giant planets at large separations
from their host star. This work helps to motivate
such planet searches by predicting a population of
young giant planets that could be detectable by
direct imaging campaigns. Both the
classical core accretion and the gravitational
instability model for planet formation are
hard-pressed to form such planets in
situ. Therefore, direct imaging searches have
traditionally appealed to the possibility of
in situ planet formation via a large
scale gravitational instability. Here, we show
that dynamical instabilities among
planetary systems that originally formed
multiple giant planets much closer to the
host star could produce a population of giant
planets at large separations. The number and
distribution of such planets is a strong
function of time, complicating the statistical
analysis of direct imaging surveys. The
number and radial distribution of such planets
is related to the number of giant planets
formed per host star and the timescale for the
disk evolution. Thus, direct imaging programs
with sufficient sensitivity and survey
size could place interesting constraints on
planet formation models.