The stability of ultra-compact planetary systems

B. Funk¹, G. Wuchterl², R. Schwarz^1,3, E. Pilat-Lohinger³ and S. Eggl³

¹ Department of Astronomy, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter Sétány 1/A, 1117 Budapest, Hungary e-mail: funk@astro.univie.ac.at
² Thüringer Landessternwarte, Sternwarte 5, 07778 Tautenburg, Germany e-mail: gwuchterl@TLS-Tautenburg.de
³ Institute for Astronomy, University of Vienna, Türkenschanzstrasse 17, 1180 Vienna, Austria e-mail: [schwarz;lohinger;eggl]@astro.univie.ac.at

Received: 15 June 2009
Accepted: 15 March 2010

Abstract

Aims. We investigate the dynamical stability of compact planetary systems in the CoRoT discovery space, i.e., with orbital periods of less than 50 days, including a detailed study of the stability of systems, which are spaced according to Hill's criteria.

Methods. The innermost fictitious planet was placed close to the Roche limit from the star (M_Star = 1 M_Sun) and all other fictitious planets are lined up according to Hill's criteria up to a distance of 0.26 AU, which corresponds to a 50 day period for a Sun-massed star. For the masses of the fictitious planets, we chose a range of 0.33–17 m_Earth, where in each simulation all fictitious planets have the same mass. Additionally, we tested the influence of both the semi-major axis of the innermost planet and of the number of planets. In a next step we also included a gas giant in our calculations, which perturbs the inner ones and investigated their stability.

Results. With numerous integrations of many different configurations we could show that long-time stable motion is possible for up to 10 planets with 17 m_Earth within a distance of 0.26 AU. Further investigations show that the fictitious planets remain stable under certain circumstances even if a close-in gas giant is present.