Can Planet Form in Highly Inclined Binaries?

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

Planet formation in binaries may often occur in a disk highly inclined with respect to the companion star orbit. According to Hale (1994) the spins of two stars in a binary system are aligned only for separations 30--40 AU or less. We study how the perturbations of an companion star on an orbit inclined with respect to the planetesimal disk affect the mutual relative velocities within the planetesimal swarm and the accretion process. We show that, for binary inclinations higher than 10 degrees, planetesimals evolve, at a first approximation, in a gas-free environment. Planetesimal accretion is possible around the central star in a region whose limits are determined by two parameters: the mutual inclination between the binary plane and the disk and the binary eccentricity. The onset of large mutual inclinations between planetesimals due to the nodal randomization causes an increase in the relative velocity. The planet formation process strongly depends on the balance between the timescale for node randomization and that of planetesimal accretion. When the binary semimajor axis is larger than 70 AU, planet formation appears possible even for eccentric binaries (up to 0.4). For smaller binary separations the region where planetesimals accumulate into protoplanets consistently shrinks. For a mutual inclination between the binary plane and that of the planetesimal disk larger than 40° the Kozai mechanism strongly inhibits planetesimal accumulation.

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