Galactic perturbations on the population of wide binary stars with exoplanets

TL;DR

This study investigates how the Galactic environment influences the stability and evolution of wide binary star systems with exoplanets, revealing that Galactic tides primarily cause binary disruption, affecting planetary system stability.

Contribution

The paper provides a large-scale numerical simulation of 300,000 binary systems, demonstrating the dominant role of stellar separation in binary disruption and testing the impulse approximation model.

Findings

Binary disruption mainly depends on star separation.

Galactic tides influence planetary system stability.

Results align with previous studies on Galactic effects.

Abstract

Aims. The aim of this work is to study the dynamical effects of the Galaxy on binary star systems with physical and orbital charac- teristics similar to those of the population of known wide binary stars with exoplanets. As secondary goal we analyse the possible consequences on the stability of a hypothetical planetary system orbiting one of the stellar components. Methods. We numerically reproduced the temporal evolution of a sample of 3 * 10 5 binary star systems disturbed by the Galactic potential and passing stars in an environment similar to the solar neighbourhood. Results. Our results show that the dynamical evolution of the population of wide binary stars with exoplanets in the solar neigh- bourhood is modelled by the process of disruption of binary star systems induced by the Galaxy. We found that this process depends mainly on the separation between both stars, whereas it is almost independent of the initial orbital configuration. Moreover, our calcu- lations are in agreement with the results of previous works regarding the indirect influence of the Galaxy on the stability of planetary systems in wide binary stars. However, the effects on the planetary region show a dependence on the initial configuration of binary stars. Finally, we obtain an indirect test of the impulse approximation model for dynamical studies of binary star systems.