Related papers: Why do warm Neptunes present nonzero eccentricity?
Several studies have already considered the influence of tides on the evolution of systems composed of a star and a close-in companion to tentatively explain different observations such as the spin-up of some stars with hot Jupiters, the…
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…
The distribution of the orbits of close-in exoplanets shows evidence for on-going removal and destruction by tides. Tides raised on a planet's host star cause the planet's orbit to decay, even after the orbital eccentricity has dropped to…
About one out of 200 Sun-like stars has a planet with an orbital period shorter than one day: an ultra-short-period planet (Sanchis-ojeda et al. 2014; Winn et al. 2018). All of the previously known ultra-short-period planets are either hot…
In close binary stars, the tidal excitation of pulsations typically dissipates energy, causing the system to evolve towards a circular orbit with aligned and synchronized stellar spins. However, for stars with self-excited pulsations, we…
Warm Jupiters with orbital periods of $\approx$10-365 d represent a population of giant planets located well within the water ice line but beyond the region of tidal influence of their host star relevant for high-eccentricity tidal…
The equilibrium rotation rate of a planet is determined by the sum of torques acting on its solid body. For planets with atmospheres, the dominant torques are usually the gravitational tide, which acts to slow the planet's rotation rate,…
Recent analyses have revealed a mystery. The orbital period of the highly inflated hot Jupiter, WASP-12b, is decreasing rapidly. The rate of inspiral, however, is too fast to be explained by either eccentricity tides or equilibrium stellar…
The majority of Milky Way extrasolar planets likely reside within a few kpc of the Galactic centre. The Galactic tidal forces acting on planets scale inversely with radius in the Galaxy and so are much greater in the inner Galaxy than in…
Much of the dynamical structure of the Kuiper belt can be explained if Neptune migrated over several AU, and/or if Neptune was scattered to an eccentric orbit during planetary instability. An outstanding problem with the existing formation…
Semidiurnal atmospheric thermal tides are important for terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zone of their host stars. With solid tides, they torque these planets, thus contributing to determine their rotation states as well as their…
The obliquity of the Earth, which controls our seasons, varies by only ~2.5 degrees over ~40,000 years, and its eccentricity varies by only ~0.05 over 100,000 years. Nonetheless, these small variations influence Earth's ice ages. For…
Approximately half of the planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission are in systems where just a single planet transits its host star, and the remaining planets are observed to be in multi-planet systems. Recent analyses have reported a…
Planets with non-zero obliquity and/or orbital eccentricity experience seasonal variations of stellar irradiation at local latitudes. The extent of the atmospheric response can be crudely estimated by the ratio between the orbital timescale…
The internal structures and compositions of Uranus and Neptune are not well constrained due to the uncertainty in rotation period and flattening, as well as the relatively large error bars on the gravitational coefficients. While Uranus and…
Exploring planetary systems similar to our solar system can provide a means to explore a large range of possibly temperate climates on Earth-like worlds. Rather than run hundreds of simulations with different eccentricities at fixed…
The origins of Uranus and Neptune are not fully understood. Their inclined rotation axes -- obliquities -- suggest that they experienced giant impacts during their formation histories. Simulations modeling their accretion from giant impacts…
Saturn raises a time-dependent tide on its small moon Enceladus, due to the eccentricity of the orbit. As shown in a companion paper (Goldreich et al.), the resulting tidal heating drives Enceladus into a limit cycle, in which its…
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…
We study the orbital evolution of hot Jupiters due to the excitation and damping of tidally driven $g$-modes within solar-type host stars. Linearly resonant $g$-modes (the dynamical tide) are driven to such large amplitudes in the stellar…