Forming Circumbinary Planets: N-body Simulations of Kepler-34

Abstract

Observations of circumbinary planets orbiting very close to the central stars have shown that planet formation may occur in a very hostile environment, where the gravitational pull from the binary should be very strong on the primordial protoplanetary disk. Elevated impact velocities and orbit crossings from eccentricity oscillations are the primary contributors towards high energy, potentially destructive collisions that inhibit the growth of aspiring planets. In this work, we conduct high resolution, inter-particle gravity enabled N-body simulations to investigate the feasibility of planetesimal growth in the Kepler-34 system. We improve upon previous work by including planetesimal disk self-gravity and an extensive collision model to accurately handle inter-planetesimal interactions. We find that super-catastrophic erosion events are the dominant mechanism up to and including the orbital radius of Kepler-34(AB)b, making in-situ growth unlikely. It is more plausible that Kepler-34(AB)b migrated from a region beyond 1.5 AU. Based on the conclusions that we have made for Kepler-34 it seems likely that all of the currently known circumbinary planets have also migrated significantly from their formation location with the possible exception of Kepler-47(AB)c.

6 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJL

References in corpus (5)

• The Transiting Circumbinary Planets Kepler-34 and Kepler-35
• Relative velocities among accreting planetesimals in binary systems: the circumprimary case
• Relative velocities among accreting planetesimals in binary systems: the circumbinary case
• Planetesimal and gas dynamics in binaries
• The dispersal of protoplanetary disks around binary stars

Cited by in corpus (33)

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• Radial-velocity discovery of a second planet in the TOI-1338/BEBOP-1 circumbinary system
• On the Fate of Unstable Circumbinary Planets: Tatooine's Close Encounters with a Death Star
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• Planets in Binaries: Formation and Dynamical Evolution
• Evolution of circumbinary planets around eccentric binaries: The case of Kepler-34
• Spiral patterns in planetesimal circumbinary disks
• Habitable Zones with Stable Orbits for Planets around Binary Systems
• Tidal Downsizing Model. III. Planets from sub-Earths to Brown Dwarfs: structure and metallicity preferences
• The Role of Disc Self-Gravity in Circumbinary Planet Systems: I. Disc Structure and Evolution
• Hydrodynamical turbulence in eccentric circumbinary discs and its impact on the in situ formation of circumbinary planets
• Populations of planets in multiple star systems
• Modelling circumbinary protoplanetary disks: I. Fluid simulations of the Kepler-16 and 34 systems
• Orbital alignment of circumbinary planets that form in misaligned circumbinary discs: the case of Kepler-413b
• Dusty circumbinary discs: inner cavity structures and stopping locations of migrating planets
• Global N-body simulations of circumbinary planet formation around Kepler-16 and -34 analogues I: Exploring the pebble accretion scenario
• Running The Gauntlet -- Survival of Small Circumbinary Planets Migrating Through Destabilising Resonances
• The Role of Disc Self-Gravity in Circumbinary Planet Systems: II. Planet Evolution
• Terrestrial planet formation in a circumbinary disc around a coplanar binary
• Structures in circumbinary disks: Prospects for observability
• Modelling circumbinary protoplanetary disks II. Gas disk feedback on planetesimal dynamical and collisional evolution in the circumbinary systems Kepler-16 and 34
• Sculpting the circumbinary planet size distribution through resonant interactions with companion planets
• Evolution of a ring around the Pluto-Charon binary
• On the Estimation of Circumbinary Orbital Properties
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• Simulations of the dynamics of the debris disks in the systems Kepler-16, Kepler-34, and Kepler-35
• Tidal evolution of circumbinary systems with arbitrary eccentricities: applications for Kepler systems
• Statistics of collision parameters computed from 2D simulations
• Water worlds in N-body simulations with fragmentation in systems without gaseous giants