Related papers: Inclination instability of circumbinary planets
Chaotic dynamics are expected during and after planet formation, and a leading mechanism to explain large eccentricities of gas giant exoplanets is planet-planet gravitational scattering. The same scattering has been invoked to explain…
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…
The tilt of a planet's spin axis off its orbital axis ("obliquity") is a basic physical characteristic that plays a central role in determining the planet's global circulation and energy redistribution. Moreover, recent studies have also…
We study a warping instability of a geometrically thin, non-self-gravitating, circumbinary disk around young binary stars on an eccentric orbit. Such a disk is subject to both the tidal torques due to a time-dependent binary potential and…
Inspired by recent observations suggesting that the retrograde precession of the brown dwarf binary 2M1510 AB is consistent with induction by a polar circumbinary planet, we investigate the formation of such planets by studying the…
Planets are observed to orbit the component star(s) of stellar binary systems on so-called circumprimary or circumsecondary orbits, as well as around the entire binary system on so-called circumbinary orbits. Depending on the orbital…
We develop a phenomenological theory that aims to account for the origin of the large eccentricities of extrasolar planets and that of the small eccentricities in the solar system, the preference for apsidal alignment in non-resonant…
The existence of planets born in environments highly perturbed by a stellar companion represents a major challenge to the paradigm of planet formation. In numerical simulations, the presence of a close binary companion stirs up the relative…
Eclipsing binaries are observed to have a range of eccentricities and spin-orbit misalignments (stellar obliquities). Whether such properties are primordial, or arise from post-formation dynamical interactions remains uncertain. This paper…
Context. Dynamical studies suggest that most circumbinary discs (CBDs) should be coplanar. However, some theoretical works show that under certain conditions a CBD can become polar, which means that its rotation vector is orthogonal with…
Stars are commonly formed in binary systems, which provide a natural laboratory for studying planet formation in extreme conditions. In our first paper (Paper I) of a series Xie et al. (2011), we have shown that the intermediate stage -…
Binaries occur in many astrophysical systems, from young protostellar binaries in star forming regions to supermassive black hole binaries in galaxy centers. In many cases, a circumbinary disk of gas forms around the binary with an orbit…
Orbits of known extrasolar planets that are located outside the tidal circularization regions of their parent stars are often substantially eccentric. By contrast, planetary orbits in our Solar System are approximately circular, reflecting…
Binary black holes in which both spins are aligned with the binary's orbital angular momentum do not precess. However, the up-down configuration, in which the spin of the heavier (lighter) black hole is aligned (anti-aligned) with the…
We study the orbital evolution of eccentric binary neutron stars. The orbit is described as a Quasi-Keplarian orbit with perturbations due to tidal couplings. We find that the tidal interaction between stars contributes to orbital…
We numerically investigate the dynamics of orbits in 3D circumbinary phase-space as a function of binary eccentricity and mass fraction. We find that inclined circumbinary orbits in the elliptically-restricted three-body problem display a…
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…
We examine the effects that dynamical instability has on shaping the orbital properties of exoplanetary systems. Using N-body simulations of non-EMS (Equal Mutual Separation), multi-planet systems we find that the lower limit of the…
Multiple analytical and empirical stability criteria have been derived in the literature for two planet systems. But, the dependence of the stability limit on the initial mutual inclination between the inner and outer orbits is not well…
We model the secular evolution of a star's orbit when it has a nearby binary system. We assume a hierarchical triple system where the inter-binary distance is small in comparison with the distance to the star. We show that the major secular…