Related papers: Tilting Planets During Planet Scattering
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between multiple giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities seem…
We study the final architecture of planetary systems that evolve under the combined effects of planet-planet and planetesimal scattering. Using N-body simulations we investigate the dynamics of marginally unstable systems of gas and ice…
Most giant exoplanets discovered by radial velocity surveys have much higher eccentricities than those in the solar system. The planet--planet scattering mechanism has been shown to match the broad eccentricity distribution, but the…
In the nucleated instability picture of gas giant formation, the final stage is the rapid accretion of a massive gas envelope by a solid core, bringing about a tenfold or more increase in mass. This tends to trigger the scattering of any…
A planetary system may undergo significant radial rearrangement during the early part of its lifetime. Planet migration can come about through interaction with the surrounding planetesimal disk and the gas disk--while the latter is still…
The basic geometry of the Solar System -- the shapes, spacings, and orientations of the planetary orbits -- has long been a subject of fascination as well as inspiration for planet formation theories. For exoplanetary systems, those same…
For centuries, our knowledge of planetary systems and ideas about planet formation were based on a single example, our solar system. During the last thirteen years, the discovery of ~170 planetary systems has ushered in a new era for…
Many exoplanetary systems containing hot Jupiters (HJs) exhibit significant misalignment between the spin axes of the host stars and the orbital angular momentum axes of the planets ("spin-orbit misalignment"). High-eccentricity migration…
The late-stage formation of giant planetary systems is rich in interesting dynamical mechanisms. Previous simulations of three giant planets initially on quasi-circular and quasi-coplanar orbits in the gas disc have shown that highly…
The planet formation process and subsequent planet migration may lead to configurations resulting in strong dynamical interactions among the various planets. Well-studied possible outcomes include collisions between planets, scattering…
We measure the angle between the planetary orbit and the stellar rotation axis in the transiting planetary system CoRoT-1, with new HIRES/Keck and FORS/VLT high-accuracy photometry. The data indicate a highly tilted system, with a projected…
Most transiting planets orbit very close to their parent star, causing strong tidal forces between the two bodies. Tidal interaction can modify the dynamics of the system through orbital alignment, circularisation, synchronisation, and…
Planets in extrasolar systems tend to interact such that their orbits lie near a boundary between apsidal libration and circulation, a "separatrix", with one eccentricity periodically reaching near-zero. One explanation, applied to the…
Many extrasolar planets follow orbits that differ from the nearly coplanar and circular orbits found in our solar system; orbits may be eccentric or inclined with respect to the host star's equator, and the population of giant planets…
For the majority of short period exoplanets transiting massive stars with radiative envelopes, the spin angular momentum of the host star is greater than the planetary orbital angular momentum. In this case, the orbits of the planets will…
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…
Exoplanets whose orbit is misaligned with the spin of their host star could have originated from high-speed gas blobs, which are observed in multitudes in nearby supernova remnants and planetary nebulae. These blobs grow in mass and slow…
The richness of dynamical behavior exhibited by the rotational states of various solar system objects has driven significant advances in the theoretical understanding of their evolutionary histories. An important factor that determines…
The observed orbits of extrasolar planets suggest that many giant planets migrate a considerable distance towards their parent star as a result of interactions with the protoplanetary disk, and that some of these planets become trapped in…
Disks of bodies orbiting a much more massive central object are extremely common in astrophysics. When the orbits comprising such disks are eccentric, we show they are susceptible to a new dynamical instability. Gravitational forces between…