Related papers: A Tendency Toward Alignment in Single-Star Warm Ju…
We investigate how the evolution of the stellar spin rate affects, and is affected by, planets in close orbits, via star-planet tidal interactions. To do this, we used a standard equilibrium tidal model to compute the orbital evolution of…
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…
The angle $\psi$ between a planet's orbital axis and the spin axis of its parent star is an important diagnostic of planet formation, migration, and tidal evolution. We seek empirical constraints on $\psi$ by measuring the stellar…
Current observations indicate that the planet formation process often produces multiple planet systems with nearly circular orbits, regular spacing, a narrow range of inclination angles, and similar planetary masses of order $m_{\rm…
Continued observational characterization of transiting planets that reside in close proximity to their host stars has shown that a substantial fraction of such objects posses orbits that are inclined with respect to the spin axes of their…
At least 10-15% of nearby sun-like stars have known Jupiter-mass planets. In contrast, very few planets are found in mature open and globular clusters such as the Hyades and 47 Tuc. We explore here the possibility that this dichotomy is due…
The orientation between a star's spin axis and a planet's orbital plane provides valuable information about the system's formation and dynamical history. For non-transiting planets at wide separations, true stellar obliquities are…
Stellar obliquity ($\lambda$) and orbital eccentricity ($e$) trace the dynamical histories of close-in giant planets, but the current observational picture is assembled from heterogeneous analyses that have obscured population-level trends.…
Aims: We aim to determine whether Jupiter's obliquity is bound to remain exceptionally small in the Solar System, or if it could grow in the future and reach values comparable to those of the other giant planets. Methods: The spin axis of…
Long-term orbital evolution of multi-planet systems under tidal dissipation often converges to a stationary state, known as the tidal fixed point. The fixed point is characterized by a lack of oscillations in the eccentricities and apsidal…
Many Sun-like stars are observed to host close-in super-Earths (SEs) as part of a multi-planetary system. In such a system, the spin of the SE evolves due to spin-orbit resonances and tidal dissipation. In the absence of tides, the planet's…
Many exoplanets in close-in orbits are observed to have relatively high eccentricities and large stellar obliquities. We explore the possibility that these result from planet-planet scattering by studying the dynamical outcomes from a large…
The angle between the rotation and orbital axes of stars in binary systems -- the obliquity -- is an important indicator of how these systems form and evolve but few such measurements exist. We combine the sample of astrometric orbital…
Exoplanets discovered over the last decades have provided a new sample of giant exoplanets, hot Jupiters. For lack of enough materials in current locations of hot Jupiters, they are perceived to form outside snowline. Then, migrate to the…
(abbreviated) We extend the theory of close encounters of a planet on a parabolic orbit with a star to include the effects of tides induced on the central rotating star. Orbits with arbitrary inclination to the stellar rotation axis are…
Warm jupiters are an unexpected population of extrasolar planets that are too near to their host to have formed in situ, but distant enough to retain a significant eccentricity in the face of tidal damping. These planets are curiously…
Hot Jupiters (HJs) are usually defined as giant Jovian-size planets with orbital periods $P \le 10$ days. Although they lie close to the star, several have finite eccentricities and significant misalignment angle with respect to the stellar…
We report the measurement of a spin-orbit misalignment for WASP-79b, a recently discovered, bloated transiting hot Jupiter from the WASP survey. Data were obtained using the CYCLOPS2 optical-fiber bundle and its simultaneous calibration…
The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and…
Planets have been observed in tight binary systems with separations less than 20 AU. A likely formation scenario for such systems involves a dynamical capture, after which high relative inclinations are likely and may lead to Kozai…