Evolution of a migrating giant planet in the presence of an inclined binary companion

TL;DR

This study investigates how a wide, inclined binary star companion influences the migration, eccentricity, and inclination evolution of a giant planet within a protoplanetary disk over 100 million years, revealing high scattering probabilities and complex dynamical behaviors.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive simulation-based analysis of the dynamical effects of inclined binary companions on migrating giant planets, highlighting the role of Lidov-Kozai resonance and scattering events.

Findings

High probability of scattering or ejection during disk phase.

Only 11% of systems lock into Lidov-Kozai resonance.

Inclined binaries induce high eccentricity and inclination variations.

Abstract

Aims. There are a growing number of giant planets discovered moving around one stellar component of a binary star, most of which have very diverse eccentricity. These discoveries raise the question of their formation and long-term evolution because the stellar companion can strongly affect the planet formation process. We aim to study the dynamical influence of a wide binary companion on the evolution of a single giant planet migrating in a protoplanetary disk. Methods. Using a symplectic n-body integrator adapted for binary star systems and modeling the dissipation due to the disk by appropriate formulae emerging from hydrodynamical simulations, we carried out 3600 simulations with different orbital parameters for the planet and different eccentricity and inclination values for the binary companion. The long-term evolution of the planets was followed for 100 Myr and the different dynamical behaviors were unveiled using a quadrupolar Hamiltonian approach. Results. We highlight the high probability for planets to experience, during the disk phase, a scattering event or an ejection due to the presence of a binary companion. We show that a capture in a Lidov-Kozai resonant state is far from automatic when the binary companion star is highly inclined, since only $11 \%$ of the systems end up locked in the resonance at the end of the simulations. Nevertheless, in the presence of a highly inclined binary companion, all the planetary evolutions are strongly influenced by the Lidov-Kozai resonance and the nonresonant evolutions present high eccentricity and inclination variations associated with circulation around the Lidov-Kozai islands.