The Dynamical Architecture and Habitable Zones of the Quintuplet Planetary System 55 Cancri

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to analyze the stability and habitable zones of the 55 Cancri planetary system, identifying stable regions where terrestrial planets could exist and mapping potential asteroid belts.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed dynamical analysis of the 55 Cancri system's orbital stability and habitable zones based on self-consistent orbital solutions.

Findings

System stable for at least 10^8 years.

Unstable regions near certain mean motion resonances.

Potential habitable zones between 1.0 and 2.3 AU.

Abstract

We perform numerical simulations to study the secular orbital evolution and dynamical structure in the quintuplet planetary system 55 Cancri with the self-consistent orbital solutions by Fischer and coworkers (2008). In the simulations, we show that this system can be stable at least for $10^{8}$ yr. In addition, we extensively investigate the planetary configuration of four outer companions with one terrestrial planet in the wide region of 0.790 AU $\leq a \leq $ 5.900 AU to examine the existence of potential asteroid structure and Habitable Zones (HZs). We show that there are unstable regions for the orbits about 4:1, 3:1 and 5:2 mean motion resonances (MMRs) with the outermost planet in the system, and several stable orbits can remain at 3:2 and 1:1 MMRs, which is resemblance to the asteroidal belt in solar system. In a dynamical point, the proper candidate HZs for the existence of more potential terrestrial planets reside in the wide area between 1.0 AU and 2.3 AU for relatively low eccentricities.