The orbital stability of planets trapped in the first-order mean-motion resonances

Abstract

Many extrasolar planetary systems containing multiple super-Earths have been discovered. N-body simulations taking into account standard type-I planetary migration suggest that protoplanets are captured into mean-motion resonant orbits near the inner disk edge at which the migration is halted. Previous N-body simulations suggested that orbital stability of the resonant systems depends on number of the captured planets. In the unstable case, through close scattering and merging between planets, non-resonant multiple systems are finally formed. In this paper, we investigate the critical number of the resonantly trapped planets beyond which orbital instability occurs after disk gas depletion. We find that when the total number of planets (N) is larger than the critical number (Ncrit), crossing time that is a timescale of initiation of the orbital instability is similar to non-resonant cases, while the orbital instability never occurs within the orbital calculation time (108 Kepler time) for N⩽Ncrit. Thus, the transition of crossing time across the critical number is drastic. When all the planets are trapped in 7:6 resonance of adjacent pairs, Ncrit=4. We examine the dependence of the critical number of 4:3, 6:5 and 8:7 resonance by changing the orbital separation in mutual Hill radii and planetary mass. The critical number increases with increasing the orbital separation in mutual Hill radii with fixed planetary mass and increases with increasing planetary mass with fixed the orbital separation in mutual Hill radii. We also calculate the case of a system which is not composed of the same resonance. The sharp transition of the stability can be responsible for the diversity of multiple super-Earths (non-resonant or resonant), that is being revealed by Kepler Mission.