The (In)stability of Planetary Systems

Abstract

We present results of numerical simulations which examine the dynamical stability of known planetary systems, a star with two or more planets. First we vary the initial conditions of each system based on observational data. We then determine regions of phase space which produce stable planetary configurations. For each system we perform 1000 ~1 million year integrations. We examine upsilon And, HD83443, GJ876, HD82943, 47UMa, HD168443, and the solar system (SS). We find that the resonant systems, 2 planets in a first order mean motion resonance, (HD82943 and GJ876) have very narrow zones of stability. The interacting systems, not in first order resonance, but able to perturb each other (upsilon And, 47UMa, and SS) have broad regions of stability. The separated systems, 2 planets beyond 10:1 resonance, (we only examine HD83443 and HD168443) are fully stable. Furthermore we find that the best fits to the interacting and resonant systems place them very close to unstable regions. The boundary in phase space between stability and instability depends strongly on the eccentricities, and (if applicable) the proximity of the system to perfect resonance. In addition to million year integrations, we also examined stability on ~100 million year timescales. For each system we ran ~10 long term simulations, and find that the Keplerian fits to these systems all contain configurations which may be regular on this timescale.