Planetary architectures in interacting stellar environments

Abstract

ABSTRACT The discovery of exoplanetary systems has challenged some of the theories of planet formation, which assume unperturbed evolution of the host star and its planets. However, in star clusters the interactions with fly-by stars and binaries may be relatively common during the lifetime of a planetary system. Here, via high-resolution N-body simulations of star–planet systems perturbed by interlopers (stars and binaries), we explore the reconfiguration to the planetary system due to the encounters. In particular, via an exploration focused on the strong scattering regime, we derive the fraction of encounters that result in planet ejections, planet transfers, and collisions by the interloper star/binary, as a function of the characteristics of the environment (density, velocity dispersion), and for different masses of the fly-by star/binary. We find that binary interlopers can significantly increase the cross-section of planet ejections and collisions, while they only slightly change the cross-section for planet transfers. Therefore, in environments with high binary fractions, floating planets are expected to be relatively common, while in environments with low binary fractions, where the cross-sections of planet ejection and transfer are comparable, the rate of planet exchanges between two stars will be comparable to the rate of production of free-floating planets.