Related papers: Analytical Solutions for Planet-Scattering Small B…
Wide-orbit exoplanets are starting to be detected, and planetary formation models are under development to understand their properties. We propose a population of "Oort" planets around other stars, forming by a mechanism analogous to how…
Planet Planet scattering is a leading dynamical mechanism invoked to explain the present orbital distribution of exoplanets. Many stars belong to binary systems, therefore it is important to understand how this mechanism works in presence…
Most major planetary bodies in the solar system rotate in the same direction as their orbital motion: their spin is prograde. Theoretical studies to explain the direction as well as the magnitude of the spin vector have had mixed success.…
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 restricted planar elliptic three body problem (RPETBP) describes the motion of a massless particle (a comet) under the gravitational field of two massive bodies (the primaries, say the Sun and Jupiter) revolving around their center of…
The dynamics of planetesimals plays an important role in planet formation, because their velocity distribution sets the growth rate to larger bodies. When planetesimals form in protoplanetary discs, their orbits are nearly circular and…
We explore the orbital dynamics of systems consisting of three planets, each as massive as the Earth, on coplanar, initially circular, orbits about a star of one solar mass. The initial semimajor axes of the planets are equally spaced in…
Binary formation in clusters through triple encounters between three unbound stars, 'three-body' binary formation, is one of the main dynamical formation processes of binary systems in dense environments. In this paper, we use an analytical…
As recent work continues to demonstrate, the study of relativistic scattering processes leads to valuable insights and computational tools applicable to the relativistic bound-orbit two-body problem. This is particularly relevant in the…
This paper presents $N$-body and stochastic models that describe the motion of tracer particles in a potential that contains a large population of extended substructures. Fluctuations of the gravitational field induce a random walk of…
The theory of the post-Newtonian (PN) planar circular restricted three-body problem is used for numerically investigating the orbital dynamics of a test particle (e.g., a comet, asteroid, meteor or spacecraft) in the planar Sun-Jupiter…
We study the capture of light objects of arbitrary velocity by binary systems. Extending results for the capture of comets in the solar system, we develop a simple geometric characterization of the capture cross section, leading directly to…
We consider the planar circular equilateral restricted four body-problem where a test particle of infinitesimal mass is moving under the gravitational attraction of three primary bodies which move on circular orbits around their common…
To better understand the orbital dynamics of exoplanets around close binary stars, i.e., circumbinary planets (CBPs), we applied techniques from dynamical systems theory to a physically motivated set of solutions in the Circular Restricted…
We study the evolution of planetesimals in evolved gaseous disks, which orbit a solar-mass star and harbor a Jupiter-mass planet at a_p~5AU. The gas dynamics is modeled with a three-dimensional hydrodynamics code that employes nested-grids…
The focus of this work is the current distribution of asteroids in co-orbital motion with Venus, Earth and Jupiter, under a quasi-coplanar configuration and for a medium-term timescale of the order of 900 years. A co-orbital trajectory is a…
In the standard formation models of terrestrial planets in the solar system and close-in super-Earths in non-resonant orbits recently discovered by exoplanet observations, planets are formed by giant impacts of protoplanets or planetary…
The process of gravitational scattering of planetesimals by a massive protoplanetary embryo is explored theoretically. We propose a method to describe the evolution of the disk surface density, eccentricity, and inclination caused by the…
An analytic solution for a Fokker-Planck equation that describes propagation of energetic particles through a scattering medium is obtained. The solution is found in terms of an infinite series of mixed moments of particle distribution. The…
Planets in extrasolar systems tend to interact such that their orbits lie near a boundary between apsidal libration and circulation, a "separatrix", with one eccentricity periodically reaching near-zero. One explanation, applied to the…