Orbital Stability of Proposed NY Virginis Exoplanets

TL;DR

This study tests the stability of proposed exoplanets around NY Virginis and finds that the suggested planetary system is dynamically unstable, indicating it cannot fully explain the observed eclipse timing variations.

Contribution

It provides a stability analysis of the proposed exoplanets, challenging previous explanations for the eclipse timing variations in NY Virginis.

Findings

Proposed planetary system is dynamically unstable within 100 Myr.

Best-fit and varied parameter models do not remain stable.

Suggests alternative explanations are needed for ETVs.

Abstract

Er et al. (2021) recently proposed a two-planet solution to account for eclipse timing variations (ETVs) observed from the sdB binary NY Virginis. We tested the proposed planetary system for orbit stability using both numerical simulations and chaotic behavior analysis. The best-fit orbits, as well as those with parameters varying by the published uncertainty range in each parameter, were unstable on a timescale much less than the presumed lifetime of the PCEB phase ($\sim$100 Myr). suggesting that the proposed circumbinary companions fail to provide a complete explanation for the observed ETVs.