Related papers: Eccentricity Distribution Beyond the Snow Line and…
Warm giant planets with orbital periods of tens of days exhibit a positive correlation between mass and eccentricity. We interpret this trend as the outcome of planet-planet scattering, representing a transition from collision-dominated…
Although the Earth's orbit is never far from circular, terrestrial planets around other stars might experience substantial changes in eccentricity that could lead to climate changes, including possible "phase transitions" such as the…
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…
The orbit eccentricities of the Solar System planets are unusually low compared to the average of known exoplanetary systems. A power law correlation has previously been found between the multiplicity of a planetary system and the orbital…
The distribution of eccentricities of warm giant exoplanets is commonly explained through planet--planet interactions, although no physically sound argument favours the ubiquity of such interactions. No simple, generic explanation has been…
Although our solar system features predominantly circular orbits, the exoplanets discovered so far indicate that this is the exception rather than the rule. This could have crucial consequences for exoplanet climates, both because eccentric…
Many observed giant planets lie on eccentric orbits. Such orbits could be the result of strong scatterings with other giant planets. The same dynamical instability that produces these scatterings may also cause habitable planets in interior…
The long-term habitability of Earth-like planets requires low orbital eccentricities. A secular perturbation from a distant stellar companion is a very important mechanism in exciting planetary eccentricities, as many of the extrasolar…
Solar system planets move on almost circular orbits. In strong contrast, many massive gas giant exoplanets travel on highly elliptical orbits, whereas the shape of the orbits of smaller, more terrestrial, exoplanets remained largely…
The discovery of terrestrial exoplanets is uncovering increasingly diverse architectures. Of particular interest are those systems that contain exoplanets at a variety of star-planet separations, allowing direct comparison of exoplanet…
We develop an idealized dynamical model to predict the typical properties of outer extrasolar planetary systems, at radii beyond 5 AU. Our hypothesis is that dynamical evolution in outer planetary systems is controlled by a combination of…
The eccentricity distribution of exoplanets is known from radial velocity surveys to be divergent from circular orbits beyond 0.1 AU. This is particularly the case for large planets where the radial velocity technique is most sensitive. The…
In a recent paper we proposed that the giant planets' primordial orbits may have been eccentric (~0.05), and used a suite of dynamical simulations to show outcomes of the giant planet instability that are consistent with their present-day…
Recent observations have indicated a strong connection between compact ($a \lesssim 0.5$ au) super-Earth and mini-Neptune systems and their outer ($a \gtrsim$ a few au) giant planet companions. We study the dynamical evolution of such inner…
Exploring planetary systems similar to our solar system can provide a means to explore a large range of possibly temperate climates on Earth-like worlds. Rather than run hundreds of simulations with different eccentricities at fixed…
The late phases of the orbital evolution of an Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star are revisited considering the effect of the density fluctuations associated with convective motions inside the star. Such fluctuations produce a random…
We investigate the underlying distribution of orbital eccentricities for planets around early-to-mid M dwarf host stars. We employ a sample of 163 planets around early- to mid-M dwarfs across 101 systems detected by NASA's Kepler Mission.…
The detection of many extrasolar gas giants with high eccentricities indicates that dynamical instabilities in planetary systems are common. These instabilities can alter the orbits of gas giants as well as the orbits of terrestrial planets…
The architecture of a planetary system can influence the habitability of a planet via orbital effects, particularly in the areas of stability and eccentricity. Some of these effects are readily apparent, particularly when they occur on…
We explore the effects of seasonal variability for the climate of Earth-like planets as determined by the two parameters polar obliquity and orbital eccentricity using a general circulation model of intermediate complexity. In the first…