Related papers: Orbital Dynamics of Multi-Planet Systems with Ecce…
The detection of exoplanets through direct imaging has produced numerous new positive identifications in recent years. The technique is biased towards planets at wide separations due to the difficulty in removing the stellar signature at…
We investigate the estimation of orbital parameters by least-$\chi^2$ Keplerian fits to radial velocity (RV) data using synthetic data sets. We find that while the fitted period is fairly accurate, the best-fit eccentricity and $M_p\sin i$…
Of the over 800 exoplanets detected to date, over half are on non-circular orbits, with eccentricities as high as 0.93. Such orbits lead to time-variable stellar heating, which has implications for the planet's atmospheric dynamical regime.…
Many exoplanets in close-in orbits are observed to have relatively high eccentricities and large stellar obliquities. We explore the possibility that these result from planet-planet scattering by studying the dynamical outcomes from a large…
It is shown herein that planets with eccentric orbits are more likely to transit than circularly orbiting planets with the same semimajor axis by a factor of (1-e^2)^{-1}. If the orbital parameters of discovered transiting planets are…
In the coming years, high contrast imaging surveys are expected to reveal the characteristics of the population of wide-orbit, massive, exoplanets. To date, a handful of wide planetary mass companions are known, but only one such…
Planets in highly eccentric orbits form a class of objects not seen within our Solar System. The most extreme case known amongst these objects is the planet orbiting HD~20782, with an orbital period of 597~days and an eccentricity of 0.96.…
The extrasolar planets discovered to date possess unexpected orbital elements. Most orbit their host stars with larger eccentricities and smaller semi-major axes than similarly sized planets in our own solar system do. It is generally…
We show that in a system of two planets initially in nearly circular orbits, an impulse perturbation that imparts a finite eccentricity to one planet's orbit causes the other planet's orbit to become eccentric as well, and also naturally…
The study of multiple extrasolar planetary systems has the opportunity to obtain constraints for the planetary masses and orbital inclinations via the detection of mutual perturbations. The analysis of precise radial velocity measurements…
Recent observations have shown that at least some close-in exoplanets maintain eccentric orbits despite tidal circularization timescales that are typically shorter than stellar ages. We explore gravitational interactions with a distant…
As a direct result of ongoing efforts to detect more exoplanetary systems, an ever-increasing number of multiple-planet systems are being announced. But how many of these systems are truly what they seem? In many cases, such systems are…
The existence of planets orbiting a central binary star system immediately raises questions regarding their formation and dynamical evolution. Recent discoveries of circumbinary planets by the Kepler space telescope has shown that some of…
We develop a phenomenological theory that aims to account for the origin of the large eccentricities of extrasolar planets and that of the small eccentricities in the solar system, the preference for apsidal alignment in non-resonant…
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 discovery of terrestrial exoplanets is uncovering increasingly diverse architectures. Of particular interest are those systems that contain exoplanets at a variety of star-planet separations, allowing direct comparison of exoplanet…
This paper considers whether the population of known transiting exoplanets provides evidence for additional outer planets on inclined orbits, due to the perturbing effect of such planets on the orbits of inner planets. As such, we develop a…
A significant proportion of exoplanets have been detected with highly tilted or even polar orbits relative to their host stars' equatorial planes. These unusual orbital configurations are often linked to post-disk secular interactions among…
Observations in the past decade have revealed extrasolar planets with a wide range of orbital semimajor axes and eccentricities. Based on the present understanding of planet formation via core accretion and oligarchic growth, we expect that…
Tidal dissipation within a short-period transiting extrasolar planet perturbed by a companion object can drive orbital evolution of the system to a so-called tidal fixed point, in which the apsidal lines of the transiting planet and its…