Title:
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The formation of circumbinary planets
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The discovery of nearly two thousand extrasolar planets over the last two
decades is indicative that planets form everywhere. Exoplanet detections
have been made of a plethora of planetary types and sizes across a wide
range of orbital characteristics. One of the more exotic locations that planets
have been discovered in is around stellar binaries. Their proximity to such
a large time-dependent potential from the orbital motion of the stars can
be problematic for their formation and long-term stability. Circumbinary
planets, with orbits that fully encompass the binary, have been found to orbit
as close as 0.3 au to the binary barycenter and are thus subject to strong
gravitational perturbations. In the formation stage, the circumbinary protoplanetary
disk experiences interactions with the binary which significantly
alters the dynamics and hence collisional evolution of planetesimals which
struggle to grow into the planets we see.
To answer the question: Could observed circumbinary planets have formed
in-situ? we perform a combination of N-body, hydro dynamical and subsequently
hybrid simulations to investigate the feasibility of planet growth
under these conditions. Our initial N-body simulations are performed in
association with an advanced collision model to identify locations in the disk
where planetesimals can accrete.
We perform hydro dynamical simulations of circumbinary gas disks to investigate
the structure and evolution of a fluid in response to a binary, across
a wide range of fluid parameters. The resulting data, a quasi-steady-state
surface density profile, is integrated in a semi-analytical way to account for
gas feedback on planetesimals. Our work suggests that the majority of observed
closely-orbiting circumbinary planets could not form in-situ due to an
overwhelming number of erosive collisions caused by high impact velocities
originating from the planetesimals' dynamical interaction with the binary and
gas gravity. Planetary embryos must have formed further out in the disk,
where velocities are lower, and this result indicates that migration is a necessary
component of planetary evolution in these systems.
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