A stability catalogue of the habitable zones in extrasolar planetary systems

Abstract

In the near future, space missions will be launched (e.g. COROT, KEPLER) to detect Earth-like extrasolar planets. The orbital elements of these (still hypothetic) planets will contain some uncertainties that can only be eliminated by careful dynamical investigations of the hosting planetary systems. The proportion of extrasolar planetary systems with one known giant planet is high (∼90 per cent). Therefore, as a first step we have investigated the possible existence of terrestrial planets in these systems. In this paper, the development of a stability catalogue of the habitable zones of exoplanetary systems is reported. This catalogue is formed by a series of stability maps, which can help to establish where Earth-like planets could exist in extrasolar planetary systems having one giant planet. After a description of the dynamical model and the numerical methods, details of the stability maps are discussed. An application of the stability catalogue to 15 known exoplanetary systems is also shown, and a characterization of the stability properties of their habitable zones is given.