The Stability and Dynamics of Planets in Tight Binary Systems

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

The discovery of planets in tight binary systems has raised new challenges to theories of stellar and planetary formation. The most likely formation scenario for such systems involves a dynamical capture mechanism. After such a capture, high relative inclinations are likely and may lead to Kozai oscillations. We numerically investigate the fate of planets which may have been orbiting the primary before acquiring a stellar companion by performing dynamical integrations for representative four-body systems composed of a tight binary with separation 10 AU, a hot Jupiter, and a second planet on a wider orbit, both orbiting a single star. We find that such a system can remain stable at low relative inclinations (< 40 deg) including a potentially habitable planet.
In systems with high relative inclinations, Kozai oscillations in the outer planetary orbit always lead to instabilities, except for a stability zone within which mutual gravitational perturbations among the planets can suppress the Kozai mechanism. During Kozai oscillations in the outer orbit, a differential nodal precession among planets is ensued breaking their coplanarity and mutual inclinations can grow considerably on secular time-scales. This has the potential to induce Kozai oscillations in the inner orbit if the time-scales associated with these oscillations is comparable to general relativistic (GR) precession time-scales.
Propagating perturbations from the stellar companion through a planetary system in this manner can have dramatic effects on the dynamical evolution of planetary systems and can offer a reasonable explanation of eccentricity trends among planets observed in binary systems.

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