Related papers: Peekaboo: Secular Resonances from Evolving Stellar…
The {\it Kepler} mission has detected thousands of planetary systems with 1-7 transiting planets packed within 0.7~au from their host stars. There is an apparent excess of single-transit planet systems that cannot be explained by transit…
Pairs of planets in a system may end up close to their host star on eccentric orbits as a consequence of planet planet scattering, Kozai or secular migration. In this scenario, general relativity and secular perturbations have comparable…
Motivated by the large number of compact extrasolar planetary systems discovered by the Kepler Mission, this paper considers perturbations due to possible additional outer planets. The discovered compact systems sometimes contain multiple…
Short and ultra-short planets are a peculiar type of exoplanets with periods as short as a few days or less. Although it is challenging to detect them, already several are observed with many additional candidates. If these planets have…
We show that in a system of two planets initially in nearly circular orbits, an impulse perturbation that imparts a finite eccentricity to one planet's orbit causes the other planet's orbit to become eccentric as well, and also naturally…
When studying transiting exoplanets it is common to assume a spherical planet shape. However short rotational periods can cause a planet to bulge at its equator, as is the case with Saturn whose equatorial radius is almost 10% larger than…
We investigate the extent to which resonances between an oscillating background of ultra-light axion and a binary Keplerian system can affect the motion of the latter. These resonances lead to perturbations in the instantaneous…
Planetary systems discovered by the Kepler space telescope exhibit an intriguing feature. While the period ratios of adjacent low-mass planets appear largely random, there is a significant excess of pairs that lie just wide of resonances…
We develop an analytic model for transit timing variations produced by orbital conjunctions between gravitationally interacting planets. If the planetary orbits have tight orbital spacing, which is a common case among the Kepler planets,…
Motivated by the diversity of circumstellar planets in binary stars and the strong effects of the secular resonances of Jupiter and Saturn on the formation and architecture of the inner solar system, we have launched an expansive project on…
We construct a secular theory of a coplanar system of N-planets not involved in strong mean motion resonances, and which are far from collision zones. Besides the point-to-point Newtonian mutual interactions, we consider the general…
Previous studies have shown that planets that rotate retrograde (backwards with respect to their orbital motion) generally experience less severe obliquity variations than those that rotate prograde (the same direction as their orbital…
Astronomers do not have a complete picture of the effects of wide-binary companions (semimajor axes greater than 100 AU) on the formation and evolution of exoplanets. We investigate these effects using new data from Gaia EDR3 and the TESS…
Before the launch of the Kepler Space Telescope, models of low-mass planet formation predicted that convergent Type I migration would often produce systems of low-mass planets in low-order mean-motion resonances. Instead, Kepler discovered…
Stellar spin-orbit misalignments (obliquities) in hot Jupiter systems have been extensively probed. Such obliquities may reveal clues about hot Jupiter dynamical histories. Common explanations for generating obliquities include…
We study the excitation of mutual inclination between planetary orbits by a novel secular-orbital resonance in multiplanet systems perturbed by binary companions which we call "ivection". The ivection resonance happens when the nodal…
In order to study the origin of the architectures of low mass planetary systems, we perform numerical surveys of the evolution of pairs of coplanar planets in the mass range $(1-4)\ \rmn{M}_{\oplus}.$ These evolve for up to $2\times10^7…
In a multi-planet system, a gradual change in one planet's semi-major axis will affect the eccentricities of all the planets, as angular momentum is distributed via secular interactions. If tidal dissipation in the planet is the cause of…
Due to fortuitous circumstances, the two giant planets around Kepler-419 have well characterized 3-D orbits. They are nearly coplanar to each other; the inner one has a large eccentricity (~0.82); and the apses of the two orbits librate…
Some systems of close-in "super-Earths" contain five or more planets on non-resonant but compact and nearly coplanar orbits. The Kepler-11 system is an iconic representative of this class of system. It is challenging to explain their…