An Investigation of the Stability of Systems of Earth-Mass Bodies Orbiting a Sun-Like Star

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

An investigation of the stability of systems of Earth-mass bodies orbiting a sun-like star has been conducted for virtual times reaching 10 billion years. The primary motivation for this study is to characterize the maximum packing density of such bodies in the habitable zone around a star. The integrator package HNBody was utilized to carry out the integrations. For the majority of the tests, a symplectic integrator with a fixed time-step of between 1.5 and 10 days was utilized; however, smaller time-steps as well as a Bulirsch-Stoer integrator were also selectively utilized to increase confidence in the results. The planets were started on initially coplanar or nearly coplanar, circular orbits, and the longitudinal initial positions of neighboring planets were widely separated. The planets were initially uniformly spaced in distance from the sun at the start of a test. The spacing of the planets in distance from the sun was varied in multiples of their mutual Hill radii between tests. The stability time was taken to be the time at which the orbits of two or more bodies crossed; that is, the radial distance at apoapsis of an inner planet became greater than the radial distance at periapsis of an outer planet. The effect of a Jupiter-type body in the system on the resulting stability has been investigated as has the effect of decreasing the planetary masses relative to the central star. Tests have been carried out for various numbers of planets. Chaos tests were performed by slightly altering the planetary masses and by varying the initial inclinations by 0.01 degrees.

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