Related papers: Dynamical Instabilities in High-Obliquity Systems
Context: As a result of Titan's migration and Saturn's probable capture in secular spin-orbit resonance, recent works show that Saturn's obliquity could be steadily increasing today and may reach large values in the next billions of years.…
The Kozai-Lidov mechanism can be applied to a vast variety of astrophysical systems involving hierarchical three-body systems. Here, we study the Kozai-Lidov mechanism systematically in the test particle limit at the octupole level of…
We consider a hierarchical triple system consisting of an inner eccentric binary with an outer companion. A highly misaligned circumbinary disk around the inner binary is subject to two competing effects: (i) nodal precession about the…
A planet's axial tilt ("obliquity") substantially affects its atmosphere and habitability. It is thus essential to comprehend the various mechanisms that can excite planetary obliquities, particularly at the primordial stage. Here, we…
Differential settling and growth of dust grains impact the structure of the radiative envelopes of gaseous planets during formation. Sufficiently rapid dust growth can result in envelopes with substantially reduced opacities for radiation…
In co-orbital planetary systems, two or more planets share the same orbit around their star. Here we test the dynamical stability of co-orbital rings of planets perturbed by outside forces. We test two setups: i) 'stationary' rings of…
Having a massive moon has been considered as a primary mechanism for stabilized planetary obliquity, an example of which being our Earth. This is, however, not always consistent with the exoplanetary cases. This article details the…
The gravitational three-body problem is a fundamental problem in physics and has significant applications to astronomy. Three-body configurations are often considered stable as long the system is hierarchical; that is, the two orbital…
A planet orbiting in a disk of planetesimals can experience an instability in which it migrates to smaller orbital radii. Resonant interactions between the planet and planetesimals remove angular momentum from the planetesimals, increasing…
We explore the effects of seasonal variability for the climate of Earth-like planets as determined by the two parameters polar obliquity and orbital eccentricity using a general circulation model of intermediate complexity. In the first…
The orbits of stars in galaxies are generically chaotic: the chaotic behavior arises in part from the intrinsically grainy nature of a potential that is composed of point masses. Even if the potential is assumed to be smooth, however,…
Chaotic dynamics are expected during and after planet formation, and a leading mechanism to explain large eccentricities of gas giant exoplanets is planet-planet gravitational scattering. The same scattering has been invoked to explain…
Exoplanet discoveries over recent years have shown that terrestrial planets are exceptionally common. Many of these planets are in compact systems that result in complex orbital dynamics. A key step toward determining the surface conditions…
Most exoplanetary systems in binary stars are of S--type, and consist of one or more planets orbiting a primary star with a wide binary stellar companion. Gravitational forcing of a single planet by a sufficiently inclined binary orbit can…
The major mass fraction of the envelope of hot luminous stars is radiatively stable. However, the partial ionisation of hydrogen, helium and iron gives rise to extended sub-surface convection zones in all of them. In this work, we…
We study the dynamical instability against bar-mode deformation of differentially rotating stars. We performed numerical simulation and linear perturbation analysis adopting polytropic equations of state with the polytropic index $n=1$. It…
We study the oscillations modes of differential rotating remnants of binary neutron star inspirals by modeling them as incompressible Riemann ellipsoids parametrized by the ratio $f$ of their internal circulation to the rotation frequency.…
To date, studies of $\textit{Laplace Surface}$ dynamics have concerned themselves with test particle orbits of fixed shape and orientation in the combined field of an oblate central body (to which the particle is bound) and a distant,…
The current orbital geometries of exoplanet systems offer a fossilized record of the systems' dynamical histories. A particularly rich set of dynamical mechanisms is available to exoplanets residing in multi-star systems, which may have…
Orbits of known extrasolar planets that are located outside the tidal circularization regions of their parent stars are often substantially eccentric. By contrast, planetary orbits in our Solar System are approximately circular, reflecting…