EARLY EXCITATION OF SPIN-ORBIT MISALIGNMENTS IN CLOSE-IN PLANETARY SYSTEMS

Continued observational characterization of transiting planets that reside in close proximity to their host stars has shown that a substantial fraction of such objects possess orbits that are inclined with respect to the spin axes of their stars. Mounting evidence for the wide-spread nature of this...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astrophysical journal 2014-07, Vol.790 (1), p.1-12
Main Authors: Spalding, Christopher, BATYGIN, KONSTANTIN
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ACCOUNTING
ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
COUPLING
EVOLUTION
EXCITATION
EXPLORATION
L-S COUPLING
MAGNETIC DISKS
MAGNETIC FIELDS
Misalignment
NEBULAE
Orbitals
ORBITS
PERTURBATION THEORY
Planet formation
Planetary systems
PLANETS
PROTOPLANETS
SATELLITES
SPIN
STARS
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Summary:Continued observational characterization of transiting planets that reside in close proximity to their host stars has shown that a substantial fraction of such objects possess orbits that are inclined with respect to the spin axes of their stars. Mounting evidence for the wide-spread nature of this phenomenon has challenged the conventional notion that large-scale orbital transport occurs during the early epochs of planet formation and is accomplished via planet-disk interactions. However, recent work has shown that the excitation of spin-orbit misalignment between protoplanetary nebulae and their host stars can naturally arise from gravitational perturbations in multi-stellar systems as well as magnetic disk-star coupling. In this work, we examine these processes in tandem. We begin with a thorough exploration of the gravitationally facilitated acquisition of spin-orbit misalignment and analytically show that the entire possible range of misalignments can be trivially reproduced. Moreover, we demonstrate that the observable spin-orbit misalignment only depends on the primordial disk-binary orbit inclination. Subsequently, we augment our treatment by accounting for magnetic torques and show that more exotic dynamical evolution is possible, provided favorable conditions for magnetic tilting. Cumulatively, our results suggest that observed spin-orbit misalignments are fully consistent with disk-driven migration as a dominant mechanism for the origin of close-in planets.
ISSN:0004-637X
1538-4357
DOI:10.1088/0004-637X/790/1/42