Dynamics of tidally captured planets in the Galactic Center

TL;DR

This paper investigates how planets can be tidally captured by the supermassive black hole in the Galactic Center through three-body encounters, revealing that captured planets tend to stay close to their parent star's orbit.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the likelihood and orbital characteristics of tidally captured planets near the SMBH using high-precision simulations.

Findings

Captured planets have orbits similar to their parent stars.

Final periapsis distances are generally larger than 200 AU unless the parent star is highly eccentric.

The study enhances understanding of planetary dynamics in extreme gravitational environments.

Abstract

Recent observations suggest ongoing planet formation in the innermost parsec of our Galaxy. The super-massive black hole (SMBH) might strip planets or planetary embryos from their parent star, bringing them close enough to be tidally disrupted. We investigate the chance of planet tidal captures by running three-body encounters of SMBH-star-planet systems with a high-accuracy regularized code. We show that tidally captured planets have orbits close to those of their parent star. We conclude that the final periapsis distance of the captured planet from the SMBH will be much larger than 200 AU, unless its parent star was already on a highly eccentric orbit.