Related papers: Apsidal Alignment in Upsilon Andromedae
Several celestial bodies in co-orbital configurations exist in the solar system. However, co-orbital exoplanets have not yet been discovered. This lack may result from a degeneracy between the signal induced by co-orbital planets and other…
The Doppler technique measures the reflex radial motion of a star induced by the presence of companions and is the most successful method to detect exoplanets. If several planets are present, their signals will appear combined in the radial…
We study orbital inclination changes associated with the precession of a disc-planet system that occurs through gravitational interaction with a binary companion on an inclined orbit. We investigate whether this scenario can account for…
Observations of exoplanets have revealed that systems with planets on closely-spaced orbits are common, which motivates the question "How closely can planets orbit to one another and still be dynamically-stable for very long times?". To…
We present theoretical analysis of the astrometric searches for extrasolar planets with the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). Particularly, we derive a model for the future measurements with SIM and discuss the problem of reliable…
The planetary dynamics of $4/3$, $3/2$, $5/2$, $3/1$ and $4/1$ mean motion resonances is studied by using the model of the general three body problem in a rotating frame and by determining families of periodic orbits for each resonance.…
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…
Kepler-16 is an eccentric low-mass eclipsing binary with a circumbinary transiting planet. Here we investigate the angular momentum of the primary star, based on Kepler photometry and Keck spectroscopy. The primary star's rotation period is…
We were asked to debate the value of the cosmological mass-density parameter Omega. Is Omega_m=1 in accordance with the simplest model? Is Omega_m much smaller as indicated by some observations? There is conflicting evidence. We lay out the…
We study the orbital evolution of the 4 giant planets of our solar system in a gas disk. Our investigation extends the previous works by Masset and Snellgrove (2001) and Morbidelli and Crida (2007, MC07), which focussed on the dynamics of…
High-inclination circumplanetary orbits that are gravitationally perturbed by the central star can undergo Kozai oscillations---large-amplitude, coupled variations in the orbital eccentricity and inclination. We first study how this effect…
We carry out numerical simulations to explore the dynamical evolution of the HD 82943 and HD 37124 planetary systems,which both have two Jupiter-like planets. By simulating various planetary configurations in the neighborhood of the fitting…
In a recent paper it was reported a planetary system around the star HD60532, composed by two giant planets in a possible 3:1 mean motion resonance, that should be confirmed within the next decade. Here we show that the analysis of the…
Precision radial velocity measurements of the Gamma Cephei (HR8974) binary system suggest the existence of a planetary companion with a minimum mass of 1.7 Jupiter-mass on an elliptical orbit with a ~2.14 AU semimajor axis and 0.12…
Planets that orbit only one of the stars in stellar binary systems (i.e., circumstellar) are dynamically constrained to a limited range of orbital parameters and thus understanding conditions on their stability is of great importance in…
Recently we have demonstrated that high-precision polarization observations can detect the polarization resulting from the rotational distortion of a rapidly rotating B-type star. Here we investigate the extension of this approach to an…
Rotation and orbital eccentricity both strongly influence planetary climate. Eccentricities can often be measured for exoplanets, but rotation rates are currently difficult or impossible to constrain. Here we examine how the combined…
Recent observations show that planet can reside in close binary systems with stellar separation of only about 20 AU. However, planet formation in such close binary systems is a challenge to current theory. One of the major theoretical…
We perform a combined likelihood analysis of the latest cosmic microwave background anisotropy data and distant Type 1a Supernova data of Perlmutter etal (1998a). Our analysis is restricted to cosmological models where structure forms from…
$\gamma$ Cep Ab is a typical S-type planet, which occupies a nearly perpendicular planetary orbit relative to the binary. Here we use the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampler to conduct full N-body fitting and derive self-consistent…