Related papers: Circumbinary Habitability Niches
Stellar activity is fundamental to stellar evolution and the formation and habitability of exoplanets. The interaction between convective motions and rotation in cool stars results in a dynamo process that drives magnetic surface activity.…
Several groups have recently suggested that small planets orbiting very closely around white dwarf stars could be promising locations for life to arise, even after stellar death. There are still many uncertainties, however, regarding the…
The complexity of composite spectra of close binary star system makes study of the spectra of their component stars extremely difficult. For this reason there exists very little information on the photospheric chemical composition of stars…
Optical observations of normal-stars in binary systems with massive unseen objects have been proposed to search for candidate black holes (BHs) and provide a direct measurement of their dynamical masses. In this paper, we have performed…
The notion of a Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ), or regions of the Milky Way galaxy that preferentially maintain the conditions to sustain complex life, has recently gained attention due to the detection of numerous exoplanets and advances…
Planets in the habitable zone of lower-mass stars are often assumed to be in a state of tidally synchronized rotation, which would considerably affect their putative habitability. Although thermal tides cause Venus to rotate retrogradely,…
The environment of a binary star system may contain two circumstellar disks, one orbiting each of the stars, and a circumbinary disk orbiting about the entire binary. The disk structure and evolution are modified by the presence of the…
Most Sun-like and higher-mass stars reside in systems that include one or more gravitationally bound stellar companions. These systems offer an important probe of planet formation in the most common stellar systems, while also providing key…
We develop analytical tools and perform three-body simulations to investigate the orbital evolution and dynamical stability of binary planets within star clusters. Our analytical results show that the orbital stability of a planetary-mass…
The Habitable Zone for a given star describes the range of circumstellar distances from the star within which a planet could have liquid water on its surface, which depends upon the stellar properties. Here we describe the development of…
The galactic environment has been suspected to influence planetary habitability in many ways. Very metal-poor regions of the Galaxy, or those largely devoid of atoms more massive than H and He, are thought to be unable to form habitable…
Small planets ($R_{p} \leq 4 R_{\oplus}$) are divided into rocky super-Earths and gaseous sub-Neptunes separated by a radius gap, but the mechanisms that produce these distinct planet populations remain unclear. Binary stars are the only…
The Alpha Centauri AB system is an attractive one for radial velocity observations to detect potential exoplanets. The high metallicity of both Alpha Centauri A and B suggest that they could have possessed circumstellar discs capable of…
We summarize the results of recent theoretical work on the dynamical evolution of globular clusters containing primordial binaries. Even a very small initial binary fraction (e.g., 10%) can play a key role in supporting a cluster against…
As a contribution to the study of the habitability of extrasolar planets, we implemented a 1-D Energy Balance Model (EBM), the simplest seasonal model of planetary climate, with new prescriptions for most physical quantities. Here we apply…
The accuracy of the measurements of some astrophysical dynamical systems allows to constrain the existence of incredibly small gravitational perturbations. In particular, the internal Solar System dynamics (planets, Earth-Moon) opens up the…
We present a new empirical calibration of equilibrium tidal theory for extrasolar planet systems, extending a prior study by incorporating detailed physical models for the internal structure of planets and host stars. The resulting strength…
A common origin for a host of stellar phenomena in galactic centres is the tidal encounter between stellar binaries and a massive black hole (MBH), known as the ``Hills mechanism''. Following the encounter, binaries may disrupt into an…
Neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes are the remnants of massive stars, which ended their lives in supernova explosions. These exotic objects can only be studied in relatively rare cases. If they are interacting with close companions…
We study a new channel for binary system formation involving stars and stellar-mass primordial black holes (PBHs) embedded in dark matter (DM) minihalos. In this scenario, binaries form when a star passes through the DM minihalo surrounding…