Formation of Planets in Binary Stars

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Wilhelm Kley (†)
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: from 2006 to 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 29406733

Among the discovered 170 extrasolar planets orbiting main sequence stars about 20 are known to reside in stellar binary systems. In several of these systems the binary separation is about 20 astronomical units or less, and they contain nevertheless planets with several Jupiter masses. The mere existence of planets in these shorter period binary systems poses severe constraints for formation and survival scenarios of young protoplanets.The evolution of planets during the early phase of their formation is (independent of their initial formation process) determined by the interaction of the protoplanetary disk with the embedded planet. In this project we plan to perform numerical simulations to study the evolution of embedded planets in binary star systems for a variety of binary and disk parameters, with special emphasis on the observed shorter period objects. These type of simulations have not been performed as of today.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants