Survival of Planets Around Shrinking Stellar Binaries

Abstract

The discovery of transiting circumbinary planets by the Kepler mission suggests that planets can form efficiently around binary stars. None of the stellar binaries currently known to host planets has a period shorter than 7 days, despite the large number of eclipsing binaries found in the Kepler target list with periods shorter than a few days. These compact binaries are believed to have evolved from wider orbits into their current configurations via the so-called Lidov-Kozai migration mechanism, in which gravitational perturbations from a distant tertiary companion induce large-amplitude eccentricity oscillations in the binary, followed by orbital decay and circularization due to tidal dissipation in the stars. Here we explore the orbital evolution of planets around binaries undergoing orbital decay by this mechanism. We show that planets may survive and become misaligned from their host binary, or may develop erratic behavior in eccentricity, resulting in their consumption by the stars or ejection from the system as the binary decays. Our results suggest that circumbinary planets around compact binaries could still exist, and we offer predictions as to what their orbital configurations should be like.

Accepted for publication. 10 pages, 7 figures in main text; 4 pages, 4 figures in supplementary material

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Cited by in corpus (42)

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• Kepler-1647b: the largest and longest-period Kepler transiting circumbinary planet
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• TOI-1338: TESS' First Transiting Circumbinary Planet
• A circumbinary protoplanetary disc in a polar configuration
• A triple origin for the lack of tight coplanar circumbinary planets around short-period binaries
• Planetary engulfment as a trigger for white dwarf pollution
• Uncovering Circumbinary Planetary Architectural Properties from Selection Biases
• No circumbinary planets transiting the tightest Kepler binaries - a possible fingerprint of a third star
• The BEBOP radial-velocity survey for circumbinary planets I. Eight years of CORALIE observations of 47 single-line eclipsing binaries and abundance constraints on the masses of circumbinary planets
• The formation efficiency of close-in planets via Lidov-Kozai migration: analytic calculations
• Multiple Stellar Evolution: a population synthesis algorithm to model the stellar, binary, and dynamical evolution of multiple-star systems
• Rotation Period Evolution in Low-Mass Binary Stars: The Impact of Tidal Torques and Magnetic Braking
• Planet Scattering Around Binaries: Ejections, Not Collisions
• ALMA Discovery of Dust Belts Around Proxima Centauri
• Circumbinary planets II - when transits come and go
• Chaotic quadruple secular evolution and the production of misaligned exomoons and Warm Jupiters in stellar multiples
• Populations of planets in multiple star systems
• On The Lack of Circumbinary Planets Orbiting Isolated Binary Stars
• Instabilities in Multi-Planet Circumbinary Systems
• BEBOP III. Observations and an independent mass measurement of Kepler-16 (AB) b -- the first circumbinary planet detected with radial velocities
• The contribution of binary star formation via core-fragmentation on protostellar multiplicity
• Signature of Planetary Mergers on Stellar Spins
• The Architecture of the V892 Tau System: the Binary and its Circumbinary Disk
• Kozai-Lidov cycles towards the limit of circumbinary planets
• Disruption of Planetary Orbits Through Evection Resonance with an External Companion: Circumbinary Planets and Multiplanet Systems
• Stability of exomoons around the Kepler transiting circumbinary planets
• The binary mass ratios of circumbinary planet hosts
• Searching for Small Circumbinary Planets I. The STANLEY Automated Algorithm and No New Planets in Existing Systems
• A New Yield Simulator for Transiting Planets and False Positives: Application to the Next Generation Transit Survey
• Habitability properties of circumbinary planets
• Orphaned Exomoons: Tidal Detachment and Evaporation Following an Exoplanet-Star Collision
• On the existence of regular and irregular outer moons orbiting the Pluto-Charon system
• BEBOP VII. SOPHIE discovery of BEBOP-3b, a circumbinary giant planet on an eccentric orbit
• Dynamical Constraints on Outer Planets in Super-Earth Systems
• Tidal decay of circumbinary planetary systems
• Laplace surface dynamics, revisited: satellites, exo-planets and debris with distant, eccentric companions
• Could there be an undetected inner planet near the stability limit in Kepler-1647?
• Orbital evolution of potentially habitable planets of tidally interacting binary stars
• Circumbinary Planets -- The Next Steps
• The Number of Transits Per Epoch for Transiting Misaligned Circumbinary Planets