Tuesday, December 6, 2011

1112.0337 (Julia Fang et al.)

Predicting Planets in Kepler Multi-Planet Systems    [PDF]

Julia Fang, Jean-Luc Margot
We investigate whether any multi-planet systems among Kepler candidates can harbor additional terrestrial-mass planets or smaller bodies. We apply the "packed planetary systems" hypothesis that suggests all planetary systems are filled to capacity, and use a Hill stability criterion to identify eight 2-planet systems with significant gaps between the innermost and outermost planets. For each of these systems, we perform long-term numerical integrations of 10^7 years to investigate the stability of 4000-8000 test particles injected into the gaps. We map out stability regions in orbital parameter space, and therefore quantify the ranges of semi-major axes and eccentricities of stable particles. Strong mean-motion resonances can add additional regions of stability in otherwise unstable parameter space. We predict that Kepler candidate systems including KOI 433, KOI 72/Kepler-10, KOI 555, KOI 1596, KOI 904, KOI 223, KOI 1590, and KOI 139 can harbor additional planets or low-mass bodies between the inner and outer detected planets. These predicted planets lie in parameter space that may be detected by future observations.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.0337

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