Related papers: Stellar obliquities in exoplanetary systems
We investigate the prospects for characterizing extrasolar giant planets by measuring planetary oblateness from transit photometry and inferring planetary rotational periods. The rotation rates of planets in the solar system vary widely,…
Recent observations have shown that in many exoplanetary systems the spin axis of the parent star is misaligned with the planet's orbital axis. These have been used to argue against the scenario that short-period planets migrated to their…
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…
NASA's Kepler mission revealed that $\sim 30\%$ of Solar-type stars harbor planets with sizes between that of Earth and Neptune on nearly circular and co-planar orbits with periods less than 100 days. Such short-period compact systems are…
The equator of star K2-290A was recently found to be inclined by 124+/-6 degrees relative to the orbits of both its known transiting planets. The presence of a companion star B at ~100 au suggested that the birth protoplanetary disk could…
The majority of star formation results in binaries or higher multiple systems, and planets in such systems are constrained to a limited range of orbital parameters in order to remain stable against perturbations from stellar companions.…
Several studies have shown that the occultation of stellar active regions by the transiting planet can generate anomalies in the high-precision transit light curves, and these anomalies may lead to an inaccurate estimate of the planetary…
We show that stars with transiting planets for which the stellar obliquity is large are preferentially hot (T_eff > 6250 K). This could explain why small obliquities were observed in the earliest measurements, which focused on relatively…
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…
We provide evidence that the obliquities of stars with close-in giant planets were initially nearly random, and that the low obliquities that are often observed are a consequence of star-planet tidal interactions. The evidence is based on…
Planet formation is often considered in the context of one circumstellar disk around one star. Yet stellar binary systems are ubiquitous, and thus a substantial fraction of all potential planets must form and evolve in more complex,…
The obliquity between a planet's orbital axis and its host star's spin axis provides crucial insights into planetary formation and migration. Planets with scaled semi-major axes ($a/R_\star$) large enough to be unaffected by tidal…
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…
Obliquity variability could play an important role in the climate and habitability of a planet. Orbital modulations caused by planetary companions and the planet's spin axis precession due to the torque from the host star may lead to…
Continued observational characterization of transiting planets that reside in close proximity to their host stars has shown that a substantial fraction of such objects posses orbits that are inclined with respect to the spin axes of their…
The detection of exoplanets through direct imaging has produced numerous new positive identifications in recent years. The technique is biased towards planets at wide separations due to the difficulty in removing the stellar signature at…
(Abridged) In planetary systems with two or more giant planets, dynamical instabilities can lead to collisions or ejections through strong planet--planet scattering. Previous studies for simple initial configurations with two equal-mass…
We present a test for spin-orbit alignment for the host stars of 25 candidate planetary systems detected by the {\it Kepler} spacecraft. The inclination angle of each star's rotation axis was estimated from its rotation period, rotational…
The rotation period of some planet-hosting stars appears to be in close commensurability with the orbital period of their close-by planets. A model is proposed to interpret such a phenomenon based on the excitation of resonant oscillations…
Many exoplanets have been observed close to their parent stars with orbital periods of a few days. As for the major satellites of the Jovian planets, the figure of these planets is expected to be strongly shaped by tidal forces. However,…