Dynamics and collisional evolution of closely packed planetary systems

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-7-2017

Publication Title

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomic Society

Volume

470

Issue

4

First page number:

4145

Last page number:

4162

Abstract

High-multiplicity Kepler systems (referred to as Kepler multis) are often tightly packed and may be on the verge of instability. Many systems of this type could have experienced past instabilities, where the compact orbits and often low densities make physical collisions likely outcomes. We use numerical simulations to study the dynamical instabilities and planet-planet interactions in a synthetically generated sample of closely packed, high-multiplicity systems. We focus specifically on systems resembling Kepler-11, a Kepler multi with six planets, and run a suite of dynamical integrations, sampling the initial orbital parameters around the nominal values reported in Lissauer et al. (2011a), finding that most of the realizations are unstable, resulting in orbit crossings and, eventually, collisions and mergers.

Keywords

Equation of state, Hydrodynamics, Methods: numerical, planets and satellites: dynamical evolution and stability, Stars: individual: (Kepler-11)

Language

eng

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