Circumbinary habitable zones in the presence of a giant planet

TL;DR

This paper extends the concept of dynamically informed habitable zones to circumbinary systems with giant planets, providing analytical methods to identify potential habitable zones in multiple Kepler systems.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical approach to determine habitable zone borders in circumbinary systems with giant planets, expanding previous methods to more complex environments.

Findings

Most studied systems can host potentially habitable worlds despite giant planets.

Kepler-35, Kepler-38, and Kepler-64 offer the most promising environments.

Kepler-16 and Kepler-1647 are unlikely to support habitable worlds.

Abstract

Determining habitable zones in binary star systems can be a challenging task due to the combination of perturbed planetary orbits and varying stellar irradiation conditions. The concept of "dynamically informed habitable zones" allows us, nevertheless, to make predictions on where to look for habitable worlds in such complex environments. Dynamically informed habitable zones have been used in the past to investigate the habitability of circumstellar planets in binary systems and Earth-like analogs in systems with giant planets. Here, we extend the concept to potentially habitable worlds on circumbinary orbits. We show that habitable zone borders can be found analytically even when another giant planet is present in the system. By applying this methodology to Kepler-16, Kepler-34, Kepler-35, Kepler-38, Kepler-64, Kepler-413, Kepler-453, Kepler-1647 and Kepler-1661 we demonstrate that the presence of the known giant planets in the majority of those systems does not preclude the existence of potentially habitable worlds. Among the investigated systems Kepler-35, Kepler-38 and Kepler-64 currently seem to offer the most benign environment. In contrast, Kepler-16 and Kepler-1647 are unlikely to host habitable worlds.