Related papers: Eccentricities and the Stability of Closely-Spaced…
The known population of exoplanets exhibits a much wider range of orbital eccentricities than Solar System planets and has a much higher average eccentricity. These facts have been widely interpreted to indicate that the Solar System is an…
Recent observational missions have uncovered a significant number of compact multi-exoplanet systems. The tight orbital spacing of these systems has led to much effort being applied to the understanding of their stability; however, a key…
We study the orbital architecture of multi-planet systems detected by the Kepler transit mission using N-body simulations, focusing on the orbital spacing between adjacent planets in systems showing four or more transiting planets. We find…
The detection of many extrasolar gas giants with high eccentricities indicates that dynamical instabilities in planetary systems are common. These instabilities can alter the orbits of gas giants as well as the orbits of terrestrial planets…
Many exoplanets are discovered in binary star systems in internal or in circumbinary orbits. Whether the planet can be habitable or not depends on the possibility to maintain liquid water on its surface, and therefore on the luminosity of…
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…
This paper explores the stability of an Earth-like planet orbiting a solar mass star in the presence of an outer-lying intermediate mass companion. The overall goal is to estimate the fraction of binary systems that allow Earth-like planets…
The orbit eccentricities of the Solar System planets are unusually low compared to the average of known exoplanetary systems. A power law correlation has previously been found between the multiplicity of a planetary system and the orbital…
Recent analyses of Kepler space telescope data reveal that transiting planets with orbital periods shorter than about 2-3 days are generally observed around late-type stars with rotation periods longer than about 5-10 days. We investigate…
Transit surveys have revealed a significant population of compact multi-planet systems, containing several sub-Neptune-mass planets on close-in, tightly-packed orbits. These systems are thought to have formed through a final phase of giant…
Among the hundred or so extrasolar planets discovered to date, 19 are orbiting a component of a double or multiple star system. In this paper, we discuss the properties of these planets and compare them to the characteristics of planets…
The most puzzling property of the extrasolar planets discovered by recent radial velocity surveys is their high orbital eccentricities, which are very difficult to explain within our current theoretical paradigm for planet formation.…
We explore the possibility that the observed eccentricity distribution of extrasolar planets arose through planet-planet interactions, after the initial stage of planet formation was complete. Our results are based on ~3250 numerical…
This paper considers secular interactions within multi-planet systems. In particular we consider dynamical evolution of known planetary systems resulting from an additional hypothetical planet on an eccentric orbit. We start with an…
The planetary dynamics of $4/3$, $3/2$, $5/2$, $3/1$ and $4/1$ mean motion resonances is studied by using the model of the general three body problem in a rotating frame and by determining families of periodic orbits for each resonance.…
To improve our understanding of orbital instabilities in compact planetary systems, we compare suites of $N$-body simulations against numerical integrations of simplified dynamical models. We show that, surprisingly, dynamical models that…
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…
We extend our study of the extent of the regions within the $\alpha$ Centauri AB star system where small planets are able to orbit for billion-year timescales (Quarles & Lissauer 2016, AJ 151, 111) to investigate the effects of minimizing…
A new era of directly imaged extrasolar planets has produced a three-planet system (Marois et al. 2008), where the masses of the planets have been estimated by untested cooling models. We point out that the nominal circular, face-on orbits…
Star-planet interactions play, among other things, a crucial role in planetary orbital configurations by circularizing orbits, aligning the star and planet spin and synchronizing stellar rotation with orbital motions. This is especially…