Kepler-16b: safe in a resonance cell

Abstract

The planet Kepler-16b is known to follow a circumbinary orbit around a system of two main-sequence stars. We construct stability diagrams in the "pericentric distance - eccentricity" plane, which show that Kepler-16b is in a hazardous vicinity to the chaos domain - just between the instability "teeth" in the space of orbital parameters. Kepler-16b survives, because it is close to the stable half-integer 11/2 orbital resonance with the central binary, safe inside a resonance cell bounded by the unstable 5/1 and 6/1 resonances. The neighboring resonance cells are vacant, because they are "purged" by Kepler-16b, due to overlap of first-order resonances with the planet. The newly discovered planets Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b are also safe inside resonance cells at the chaos border.

17 pages, including 5 figures

References in corpus (8)

• The Transiting Circumbinary Planets Kepler-34 and Kepler-35
• Kepler-47: A Transiting Circumbinary Multi-Planet System
• The Neptune-Sized Circumbinary Planet Kepler-38b
• The Resonant Transneptunian Populations
• How not to build Tatooine: the difficulty of in situ formation of circumbinary planets Kepler 16b, Kepler 34b and Kepler 35b
• On the formation and migration of giant planets in circumbinary discs
• On the migration of protoplanets embedded in circumbinary disks
• The rotation states predominant among the planetary satellites

Cited by in corpus (16)

• On the Fate of Unstable Circumbinary Planets: Tatooine's Close Encounters with a Death Star
• A dynamical stability study of Kepler Circumbinary Planetary systems with one planet
• Chaotic zones around gravitating binaries
• Formation of S-type planets in close binaries: scattering induced tidal capture of circumbinary planets
• Circumbinary Planet Formation in the Kepler-16 System. II. A Toy Model for In-situ Planet Formation within a Debris Belt
• Three-lane and multi-lane signatures of planets in planetesimal disks
• Coevolution of Binaries and Gaseous Discs
• Habitability properties of circumbinary planets
• Evolution of a ring around the Pluto-Charon binary
• On the Estimation of Circumbinary Orbital Properties
• Tidal decay of circumbinary planetary systems
• Simulations of the dynamics of the debris disks in the systems Kepler-16, Kepler-34, and Kepler-35
• Massive evaluation and analysis of Poincaré recurrences on grids of initial data: a tool to map chaotic diffusion
• Structure of the Stellar Neighborhood of CQ Tau in the Presence of a Companion in an Elongated Orbit
• Dynamical environments of relativistic binaries: The phenomenon of resonance shifting
• The resilience of the sailboat stable region