Related papers: Obliquity evolution of extrasolar terrestrial plan…
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 orbital dynamics of most planetary satellites is governed by the quadrupole moment from the equatorial bulge of the host planet and the tidal field from the Sun. On the Laplace surface, the long-term orbital evolution driven by the…
Extra-solar planets close to their host stars have likely undergone significant tidal evolution since the time of their formation. Tides probably dominated their orbital evolution once the dust and gas had cleared away, and as the orbits…
The transit method is a promising means to detect exomoons, but few candidates have been identified. For planets close to their stars, the dynamical interaction between a satellite's orbit and the star must be important in their evolution.…
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between multiple giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities seem…
We investigate the prospects for characterizing extrasolar giant planets by measuring planetary oblateness from transit photometry and inferring planetary rotational periods. The rotation rates of planets in the solar system vary widely,…
The discovery of many giant planets in close-in orbits and the effect of planetary and stellar tides in their subsequent orbital decay have been extensively studied in the context of planetary formation and evolution theories. Planets…
Context. The presence of a stellar companion can strongly influence the architecture and long-term stability of planetary systems. Motivated by the discovery of exoplanets exhibiting extremely high eccentricities (e >= 0.8) in systems with…
The present obliquity of Mercury is very low (less than 0.1 degree), which led previous studies to always adopt a nearly zero obliquity during the planet's past evolution. However, the initial orientation of Mercury's rotation axis is…
We introduce our new code, SMERCURY-T, which is based on existing codes SMERCURY (Lissauer et al. 2012) and Mercury-T (Bolmont et al. 2015). The result is a mixed-variable symplectic N-body integrator that can compute the orbital and spin…
The obliquity of a planet is the tilt between its equator and its orbital plane. Giant planets are expected to form with near-zero obliquities. After its formation, some dynamical mechanism must therefore have tilted Saturn up to its…
Thousands of exoplanets have been detected to date, and with future planned missions this tally will increase. Understanding the climate dependence on the planetary parameters is vital for the study of terrestrial exoplanet habitability.…
We analyze the long-term tidal evolution of a single-planet system through the use of numerical simulations and averaged equations giving the variations of semi-major axis and eccentricity of the relative orbit. For different types of…
NASA's Kepler mission revealed that $\sim 30\%$ of Solar-type stars harbor planets with sizes between that of Earth and Neptune on nearly circular and co-planar orbits with periods less than 100 days. Such short-period compact systems are…
The significant orbital eccentricities of most giant extrasolar planets may have their origin in the gravitational dynamics of initially unstable multiple planet systems. In this work, we explore the dynamics of two close planets on…
Some of the satellites in the Solar System, including the Moon, appear to have been captured from heliocentric orbits at some point in their past, and then have evolved to the present configurations. The exact process of how this trapping…
Of the fourteen transiting extrasolar planetary systems for which radii have been measured, at least three appear to be considerably larger than theoretical estimates suggest. It has been proposed by Bodenheimer, Lin & Mardling that…
Sub-Jupiter classed circumbinary planets discovered in close-in binary systems have orbits just beyond the dynamically unstable region, which is determined by the eccentricity and mass ratio of the host binary stars. These planets are…
Evidence in the Solar System suggests that the giant planets underwent an epoch of radial migration that was very rapid, with an e-folding timescale shorter than 1~Myr. It is probable that the cause of this migration was that the giant…
This decade has seen the first measurements of extrasolar planetary obliquities, characterizing how an exoplanet's spin axis is oriented relative to its orbital axis. These measurements are enabled by combining projected rotational…