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Published December 2022 | Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

A criterion for the stability of planets in chains of resonances

Abstract

Uncovering the formation process that reproduces the distinct properties of compact super-Earth exoplanet systems is a major goal of planet formation theory. The most successful model argues that non-resonant systems begin as resonant chains of planets that later experience a dynamical instability. However, both the boundary of stability in resonant chains and the mechanism of the instability itself are poorly understood. Previous work postulated that a secondary resonance between the fastest libration frequency and a difference in synodic frequencies destabilizes the system. Here, we use that hypothesis to produce a simple and general criterion for resonant chain stability that depends only on planet orbital periods and masses. We show that the criterion accurately predicts the maximum mass of planets in synthetic resonant chains up to six planets. More complicated resonant chains produced in population synthesis simulations are found to be less stable than expected, although our criterion remains useful and superior to machine learning models.

Additional Information

© 2022 Elsevier. Received 15 May 2022, Revised 20 July 2022, Accepted 25 July 2022, Available online 2 August 2022. We are grateful to Antoine Petit and an anonymous referee for valuable feedback that significantly improved this work. We thank Gabriele Pichierri and Sean Raymond for insightful discussions and André Izidoro for providing simulation results. K. B. is grateful to Caltech, the Caltech Center for Comparative Planetary Evolution, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for their generous support. A. M. acknowledges support from the ERC advanced grant HolyEarth N. 101019380. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Data availability. Data will be made available on request.

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Accepted Version - 2207.13833.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023