paper

Obliquity evolution of extrasolar terrestrial planets

arXiv:astro-ph/0611669 · doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2006.11.022

Abstract

We have investigated the obliquity evolution of terrestrial planets in habitable zones (at ~ 1AU) in extrasolar planetary systems, due to tidal interactions with their satellite and host star with wide varieties of satellite-to-planet mass ratio and initial obliquity, through numerical calculations and analytical arguments. The obliquity, the angle between planetary spin axis and its orbit normal, of a terrestrial planet is one of the key factors in determining the planetary surface environments. A recent scenario of terrestrial planet accretion implies that giant impacts of Mars-sized bodies determine the planetary spin and form satellites. With isotropic giant impacts, tilted spins are more likely to be produced than straight ones and satellites with various mass are formed. However, most of previous studies have focused on a particular case of the Earth-Moon systems or the two-body planar problem. We numerically integrated the evolution of planetary spin and a satellite orbit with various satellite mass and initial obliquity. We found that in the case of initially tiled spins, the satellite's orbit migrates outward until the orbit reaches the critical radius ~ 10-20 planetary radii, but then the migration is reversed to inward one with large-amplitude oscillation. The satellite eventually falls onto the planetary surface or it is captured at the synchronous state at several planetary radii. With the results of numerical integration and analytical arguments, we identified the parameter regions of qualitatively different evolution.

27 pages, 16 figures, Icarus, in press

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