Terrestrial Planet Formation around Individual Stars within Binary Star Systems
Author(s) -
Elisa V. Quintana,
Fred C. Adams,
Jack J. Lissauer,
John Chambers
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the astrophysical journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.376
H-Index - 489
eISSN - 1538-4357
pISSN - 0004-637X
DOI - 10.1086/512542
Subject(s) - physics , terrestrial planet , planet , astrophysics , stars , binary number , binary star , astronomy , orbital elements , primary (astronomy) , planetary system , solar system , population , demography , arithmetic , mathematics , sociology
We calculate herein the late stages of terrestrial planet accumulation arounda solar type star that has a binary companion with semimajor axis larger thanthe terrestrial planet region. We perform more than one hundred simulations tosurvey binary parameter space and to account for sensitive dependence oninitial conditions in these dynamical systems. As expected, sufficiently widebinaries leave the planet formation process largely unaffected. As a roughapproximation, binary stars with periastron $q_B > 10$ AU have minimal effecton terrestrial planet formation within $\sim 2$ AU of the primary, whereasbinary stars with $q_B \la$ 5 AU restrict terrestrial planet formation towithin $\sim$ 1 AU of the primary star. Given the observed distribution ofbinary orbital elements for solar type primaries, we estimate that about 40 --50 percent of the binary population is wide enough to allow terrestrial planetformation to take place unimpeded. The large number of simulations allows forus to determine the distribution of results -- the distribution of plausibleterrestrial planet systems -- for effectively equivalent starting conditions.We present (rough) distributions for the number of planets, their masses, andtheir orbital elements.Comment: 35 pages, 12 figures (8 color), 3 tables; Accepted to Ap
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