Related papers: Rapid dynamical chaos in an exoplanetary system
Studying the orbital stability of multi-planet systems is essential to understand planet formation, estimate the stable time of an observed planetary system, and advance population synthesis models. Although previous studies have primarily…
We investigate the non-resonant, 3-D (spatial) model of the hierarchical system composed of point-mass stellar (or sub-stellar) binary and a low-mass companion (a circumbinary planet or a brown dwarf). We take into account the leading…
We present an analytical formalism to study the secular dynamics of a system consisting of N-2 planets orbiting a binary star in outer orbits. We introduce a canonical coordinate system and expand the disturbing function in terms of…
We consider two stable heteroclinic cycles rotating in opposite directions, coupled via diffusive terms. A complete synchronization in this system is impossible, and numerical exploration shows that chaos is abundant at low levels of…
The five planets discovered around the main-sequence star 55 Cnc may represent a case of stable chaos. By using both the Frequency Map Analysis and MEGNO we find that about 15 % of the systems that can be build from the nominal orbital…
The Kepler planetary system consists of two exoplanets at similar separations (0.115 & 0.128 AU), which have dramatically different densities. The inner planet has a density consistent with an Earth-like composition, while the outer planet…
We consider the chaotic motion of low-mass bodies in two-body high-order mean-motion resonances with planets in model planetary systems, and analytically estimate the Lyapunov and diffusion timescales of the motion in multiplets of…
High-multiplicity Kepler systems (referred to as Kepler multis) are often tightly packed and may be on the verge of instability. Many systems of this type could have experienced past instabilities, where the compact orbits and often low…
In the inner solar system, the planets' orbits evolve chaotically, driven primarily by secular chaos. Mercury has a particularly chaotic orbit, and is in danger of being lost within a few billion years. Just as secular chaos is reorganizing…
Three types of orbits are theoretically possible in autonomous Hamiltonian systems with three degrees of freedom: fully chaotic (they only obey the energy integral), partially chaotic (they obey an additional isolating integral besides…
The HR8799 planetary system with four ~10 mJup planets in wide orbits up to 70 au, and periods up to 500 yr has been detected with the direct imaging. Its intriguing orbital architecture is not fully resolved due to time-limited astrometry…
We show that stability of planetary systems is intimately connected with their internal order. An arbitrary initial distribution of planets is susceptible to catastrophic events in which planets either collide or are ejected from the…
Many Kepler multiplanet systems have planet pairs near low-order, mean-motion resonances. In addition, many Kepler multiplanet systems have planets with orbital periods less than a few days. With the exception of Kepler-42, however, there…
The discovery of the chaotic motion of the planets in the Solar System dates back more than 30 years. Still, no analytical theory has satisfactorily addressed the origin of chaos so far. Implementing canonical perturbation theory in the…
Recent observational campaigns have shown that multi-planet systems seem to be abundant in our Galaxy. Moreover, it seems that these systems might have distant companions, either planets, brown-dwarfs or other stellar objects. These…
Kepler-56 is a multi-planet system containing two coplanar inner planets that are in orbits misaligned with respect to the spin axis of the host star, and an outer planet. Various mechanisms have been proposed to explain the broad…
The presence of chaos in classical Hamiltonian systems is witnessed by its maximal Lyapunov exponent, that quantifies the instability of motion through the exponential growth of indicators such as the trace of the stability matrix or the…
We study the chaotic orbital evolution of planetary systems, focusing on secular (i.e., orbit-averaged) interactions, because these often dominate on long timescales. We first focus on the evolution of a test particle that is forced by…
If you are given a simple three-dimensional autonomous quadratic system that has only one stable equilibrium, what would you predict its dynamics to be, stable or periodic? Will it be surprising if you are shown that such a system is…
The formation of the solar system's terrestrial planets has been numerically modeled in various works, and many other studies have been devoted to characterizing our modern planets' chaotic dynamical state. However, it is still not known…