Dynamical Habitability of Compact Planetary Systems around M stars - Application to Proxima Centauri
- Author(s)
- Renate Zechner, Richard Schwarz, Rudolf Dvorak
- Abstract
The dynamical stability of extrasolar planets in the habitable zones (HZs) of compact planetary systems around M stars, e.g. Proxima Centauri, has been investigated by performing extensive numerical simulations. The estimated HZs for these systems range between 0.190 -0.483 AU for M0 stars and 0.014 - 0.039 AU for M9 stars, respectively. Within these regions, we placed fictitious Earth-sized planets according to Hill's criteria (see Funk et al. 2010) so that the innermost planet is located at the inner limit of the HZ and all other fictitious planets are lined up to the outer limit of the HZ.
The main goal of our investigation is to determine the maximum number of possible terrestrial planets within the HZ. Numerical simulations with different initial conditions and integration times up to 10^6 years showed that long-time stable motion is possible for up to 4 Earth-sized bodies in the Proxima Centauri system. In addition, we present several investigations around M star systems and we show the differences in the possible number of stable planets within the HZ, as shown in Schwarz et al. 2010.- Organisation(s)
- Department of Astrophysics
- Publication date
- 2017
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103003 Astronomy, 103004 Astrophysics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/c9a23252-7d5f-4a7a-99f1-a147c175d732