Related papers: Long-term instability of the inner Solar System: n…
Planetary systems with more than two bodies will experience orbital crossings at a time related to the initial orbital separations of the planets. After a crossing, the system enters a period of chaotic evolution ending in the reshaping of…
With the availability of considerably more data, we revisit the question of how special our Solar System is, compared to observed exoplanetary systems. To this goal, we employ a mathematical transformation that allows for a meaningful,…
Over the last decade, evidence has mounted that the solar system's observed state can be favorably reproduced in the context of an instability-driven dynamical evolution model, such as the "Nice" model. To date, all successful realizations…
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…
Recent work has suggested that many planetary systems lie near instability. If all systems are near instability, an additional planet must exist in stable regions of well-separated extra-solar planetary systems to push these systems to the…
We consider time-periodic perturbations of single-degree-of-freedom Hamiltonian systems and study their real-meromorphic nonintegrability in the Bogoyavlenskij sense using a generalized version due to Ayoul and Zung of the Morales-Ramis…
Because of the high eccentricities (~0.3) of two of the possible planets about the star Upsilon Andromeda, the stability of the system requires careful study. We present results of 1000 numerical simulations which explore the orbital…
Despite the discovery of thousands of exoplanets in recent years, the number of known exoplanets in star clusters remains tiny. This may be a consequence of close stellar encounters perturbing the dynamical evolution of planetary systems in…
With $n$-body simulations we investigate the stability of tilted circumbinary planetary systems consisting of two nonzero mass planets. The planets are initially in circular orbits that are coplanar to each other, as would be expected if…
We find an interesting fact that fictitious retrograde co-orbitals of Saturn, or small bodies inside the retrograde 1:1 resonance with Saturn, are highly unstable in our numerical simulations. It is shown that in the presence of Jupiter,…
The two innermost planets of the Proxima Centauri system are separated by just 0.02 au, inducing strong gravitational interactions between them. We assess this interaction by leveraging fast orbital stability indicators and find that…
We study the chaotic orbital evolution of planetary systems, focusing on secular (i.e., orbit-averaged) interactions, because these often dominate on long timescales. We first focus on the evolution of a test particle that is forced by…
This paper explores the stability of an Earth-like planet orbiting a solar-mass star in the presence of a stellar companion using ~ 400,000 numerical integrations. Given the chaotic nature of the systems being considered, we perform a…
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between several giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities would…
We study the effect of a massive planetesimal disk on the dynamical stability of the outer planets assuming, as has been suggested recently, that these were initially locked in a compact and multiresonant configuration as a result of…
The characteristic orbital period of the inner-most objects within the galactic census of planetary and satellite systems appears to be nearly universal, with $P$ on the order of a few days. This paper presents a theoretical framework that…
From the numerous detected planets outside the Solar system, no terrestrial planet comparable to our Earth has been discovered so far. The search for an Exo-Earth is certainly a big challenge which may require the detections of planetary…
We demonstrate that the system of Jovian planets (Sun+Jupiter+Saturn+Uranus+Neptune), integrated for 200 million years as an isolated 5-body system using many sets of initial conditions all within the uncertainty bounds of their currently…
This chapter concerns the long-term dynamical evolution of planetary systems from both theoretical and observational perspectives. We begin by discussing the planet-planet interactions that take place within our own Solar System. We then…
The long-term evolution of the outer Solar System is subject to the influence of the giant planets, however, perturbations from other massive bodies located in the region imprint secular signatures, that are discernible in long-term…