Related papers: Planetary Spin and Obliquity from Mergers
Transiting circumbinary planets discovered by Kepler provide unique insight into binary star and planet formation. Several features of this new found population, for example the apparent pile-up of planets near the innermost stable orbit,…
We develop a simple model of planetary formation, focusing our attention on those planets with masses less than 10 Earth masses and studying particularly the primordial spin parameters of planets resulting from the accretion of…
Stellar mergers are responsible for a large variety of astrophysical phenomena. They form blue straggler stars, give rise to spectacular transients, and produce some of the most massive stars in the Universe. Here, we focus on mergers from…
Most major planetary bodies in the solar system rotate in the same direction as their orbital motion: their spin is prograde. Theoretical studies to explain the direction as well as the magnitude of the spin vector have had mixed success.…
The significant orbital eccentricities of most giant extrasolar planets may have their origin in the gravitational dynamics of initially unstable multiple planet systems. In this work, we explore the dynamics of two close planets on…
Recent studies have shown that massive galaxies in the distant universe are surprisingly compact, with typical sizes about a factor of three smaller than equally massive galaxies in the nearby universe. It has been suggested that these…
Thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets have been identified in recent years. Consequently, theoretical research on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems has seen a boost, and the processes of planet-planet…
The obliquities of planet-hosting stars are clues about the formation of planetary systems. Previous observations led to the hypothesis that for close-in giant planets, spin-orbit alignment is enforced by tidal interactions. Here, we…
We analyse the phase-space structure of simulated thick discs that are the result of a significant merger between a disc galaxy and a satellite. Our main goal is to establish what would be the characteristic imprints of a merger origin for…
Planet-planet scattering is the leading mechanism to explain the large eccentricities of the observed exoplanet population. However, scattering has not been considered important to the production of pairs of planets in mean motion…
Exoplanets are organized in a broad array of orbital configurations that reflect their formation along with billions of years of dynamical processing through gravitational interactions. This history is encoded in the angular momentum…
We consider black holes resulting from binary black hole mergers. By fitting to numerical results we construct analytic formulas that predict the mass and spin of the final black hole. Our formulas are valid for arbitrary initial spins and…
The discovery of Jupiter-mass planets in close orbits about their parent stars has challenged models of planet formation. Recent observations have shown that a number of these planets have highly inclined, sometimes retrograde orbits about…
A widely considered characteristic of extra-solar planetary systems has been a seeming tendency for major axes of adjacent orbits to librate in stable configurations. Based on a new catalog of extra-solar planets (Butler et al. 2006) and…
If mutual gravitational scattering among exoplanets occurs, then it may produce unique orbital properties. For example, two-planet systems that lie near the boundary between circulation and libration of their periapses could result if…
We study the spin evolution of close-in planets in multi-body systems and present a very general formulation of the spin-orbit problem. This includes a simple way to probe the spin dynamics from the orbital perturbations, a new method for…
High-resolution numerical simulations of galaxy mergers are analysed. The global structure and isophotal shapes of the merger remnants are in good agreement with the observations. Whereas equal-mass mergers lead to anisotropic, boxy…
The Kepler mission and its successor K2 have brought forth a cascade of transiting planets. Many of these planetary systems exhibit multiple members, but a large fraction possess only a single transiting example. This overabundance of…
We recommend an intensive effort to survey and understand the obliquity distribution of small close-in extrasolar planets over the coming decade. The orbital obliquities of exoplanets--i.e., the relative orientation between the planetary…
Most stars form in a clustered environment. Both single and binary stars will sometimes encounter planetary systems in such crowded environments. Encounter rates for binaries may be larger than for single stars, even for binary fractions as…