Formation of circumbinary planets in a dead zone

Abstract

Circumbinary planets have been observed at orbital radii where binary perturbations may have significant effects on the gas disk structure, on planetesimal velocity dispersion, and on the coupling between turbulence and planetesimals. Here, we note that the impact of all of these effects on planet formation is qualitatively altered if the circumbinary disk structure is layered, with a non-turbulent midplane layer (dead zone) and strongly turbulent surface layers. For close binaries, we find that the dead zone typically extends from a radius close to the inner disk edge up to a radius of around 10-20 au from the centre of mass of the binary. The peak in the surface density occurs within the dead zone, far from the inner disk edge, close to the snow line, and may act as a trap for aerodynamically coupled solids. We suggest that circumbinary planet formation may be easier near this preferential location than for disks around single stars. However, dead zones around wide binaries are less likely and hence planet formation may be more difficult there.

Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (11)

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• Planet Scattering Around Binaries: Ejections, Not Collisions
• The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in Earth's Solar Transit Zone
• Planet Packing in Circumbinary Systems
• Accretion and Orbital Inspiral in Gas-Assisted Supermassive Black Hole Binary Mergers
• Milankovitch Cycles of Terrestrial Planets in Binary Star Systems
• SPOTS: The Search for Planets Orbiting Two Stars. I. Survey description and first observations
• Circumbinary Planet Formation in the Kepler-16 System. II. A Toy Model for In-situ Planet Formation within a Debris Belt
• Generalized Similarity for Accretion/Decretion Disks
• Global N-body simulations of circumbinary planet formation around Kepler-16 and -34 analogues I: Exploring the pebble accretion scenario
• Terrestrial planet formation in a circumbinary disc around a coplanar binary
• Effects of XUV radiation on circumbinary planets
• Habitability properties of circumbinary planets
• Sculpting the circumbinary planet size distribution through resonant interactions with companion planets
• Tatooine Nurseries: Structure and Evolution of Circumbinary Protoplanetary Disks
• Evolution of circumbinary protoplanetary disks with photoevaporative winds driven by External Far Ultraviolet Radiation
• On the location of the ice line in circumbinary discs