Dynamical Instabilities in Extrasolar Planetary Systems Containing Two Giant Planets

By Eric B. Ford, Markéta Havlíčková, F. Rasio. 2000

160 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between several giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities seem to provide a natural mechanism for producing the highly eccentric orbits seen in many systems. Here we present results from a new set of numerical integrations for the dynamical evolution of planetary systems containing two identical giant planets in nearly circular orbits very close to the dynamical stability limit. We determine the statistical properties of the three main types of systems resulting from the development of an instability: systems containing one planet, following either a collision between the two initial planets, or the ejection of one of them to infinity, and systems containing two planets in a new, quasi-stable configuration. We discuss the implications of our results for the formation and evolution of observed extrasolar planetary systems. We conclude that the distributions of eccentricities and semimajor axes for observed systems cannot be explained easily by invoking dynamical interactions between two planets initially on circular orbits. While highly eccentric orbits can be produced naturally by these interactions, collisions between the two planets, which occur frequently in the range of observed semimajor axes, would result in many more nearly circular orbits than in the observed sample.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e2a9b2b670254d7f7e94d9fef1511fb3b3fd16dd

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. Nesvorný
2. A. Morbidelli
3. J. Winn
4. M. Perryman
5. F. Rasio
6. S. Raymond
7. Y. Lithwick
8. D. Fabrycky

Citations in the corpus

• Formation of Hot Planets by a Combination of Planet Scattering, Tidal Circularization, and the Kozai Mechanism (2008, background): “In such systems, the probability for final planets with a large ratio of semimajor axes and very large eccentricity is P3% (Ford et al. 2001).”
• HD 80606 b, a planet on an extremely elongated orbit (2001, background): “This could be via dynamical instability (e.g. Weidenschilling & Marzari 1996; Rasio & Ford 1996; Lin & Ida 1997; Ford et al. 2001) or through some resonant interaction with a disk and another planet (Murray et al. 2001).”
• Prospects for the Characterization and Confirmation of Transiting Exoplanets via the Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect (2006, background): “Such a scenario would be the natural result of planet-planet scattering (Rasio & Ford 1996; Ford et al. 2001), capture of free-floating planets (Gaudi 2003), or Kozai oscillations (Wu & Murray 2003; D. Fabrycky & S. Tremaine 2006, private communication).”
• Origins of Eccentric Extrasolar Planets: Testing the Planet-Planet Scattering Model (2007, background): “…wide orbit around the planetary system via an exchange interaction (a formation scenario similar to that proposed for the triple system PSR 1620–26; Ford et al. 2001; or other putative planets in multiple star systems; Portegies Zwart & McMillan 2005; Pfahl & Muterspaugh 2006; Malmberg et al.…”
• Are There Unstable Planetary Systems around White Dwarfs? (2002, background): “The case of two planets has been studied carefully, and for two Jovian mass planets with one planet starting at ∼5 AU, the probability of collision is roughly 8%, ejection 35%, and rearrangement 57% (Ford et al. 2001).”
• EXOPLANETARY SPIN–ORBIT ALIGNMENT: RESULTS FROM THE ENSEMBLE OF ROSSITER–MCLAUGHLIN OBSERVATIONS (2009, background): “…initial spin-orbit alignment (Lin et al. 1996; Ward 1997; Murray et al. 1998), while others would produce at least occasionally large misalignments (Ford et al. 2001; Yu & Tremaine 2001; Papaloizou & Terquem 2001; Terquem & Papaloizou 2002; Marzari & Weidenschilling 2002; Thommes & Lissauer 2003;…”
• Dynamical Outcomes of Planet-Planet Scattering (2007, background): “Previous studies have investigated gas free systems with two planets around a central star extensively (Rasio & Ford 1996; Ford et al. 2001, 2003; Ford & Rasio 2007) and have also begun to investigate the dynamics of two planets in the presence of a gas disk by using simplified prescriptions for…”
• SECULAR CHAOS AND THE PRODUCTION OF HOT JUPITERS (2010, background): “First proposed by Rasio & Ford (1996), it asserts that close encounters between planets can induce extreme eccentricity in one of the planets (Ford et al. 2001; Papaloizou & Terquem 2001; Ford & Rasio 2008), which may then be tidally circularized to form a hot Jupiter.”
• Debris disks as signposts of terrestrial planet formation (2011, background): “Planets in our mass range, formed via core accretion, are only modestly inflated at ages as short as a Myr (Marley et al. 2007), and collisions are suppressed at a > 5 AU because of the relatively modest orbital velocities at these radii (Ford et al. 2001).”
• Eccentricity Evolution for Planets in Gaseous Disks (2002, background): “Interactions among planets have been the focus of most previous suggestions (Rasio & Ford 1996; Lin & Ida 1997; Weidenschilling & Marzari 1996; Ford et al. 2001; Chiang et al. 2002).”
• EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLE SPIN–ORBIT MISALIGNMENT ALONG THE LINE OF SIGHT IN TRANSITING EXOPLANET SYSTEMS (2010, background): “…involving dynamical scattering between newly formed planets and planetesimals at several AU predict that nonnegligible misalignments ψ can occur (e.g. Ford et al. 2001; Yu & Tremaine 2001; Papaloizou & Terquem 2001; Terquem & Papaloizou 2002; Marzari & Weidenschilling 2002; Chatterjee et al. 2008;…”
• LATE ORBITAL INSTABILITIES IN THE OUTER PLANETS INDUCED BY INTERACTION WITH A SELF-GRAVITATING PLANETESIMAL DISK (2011, background): “Many observed planetary systems contain planets in MMRs (Marois et al. 2008; Rivera et al. 2010) with one another, while others appear to have undergone a global dynamical instability (Ford et al. 2001; Matsumura et al. 2010).”