417 research outputs found
Disc-protoplanet interaction Influence of circumprimary radiative discs on self-gravitating protoplanetary bodies in binary star systems
Context. More than 60 planets have been discovered so far in systems that
harbour two stars, some of which have binary semi-major axes as small as 20 au.
It is well known that the formation of planets in such systems is strongly
influenced by the stellar components, since the protoplanetary disc and the
particles within are exposed to the gravitational influence of the binary.
However, the question on how self-gravitating protoplanetary bodies affect the
evolution of a radiative, circumprimary disc is still open. Aims. We present
our 2D hydrodynamical GPU-CPU code and study the interaction of several
thousands of self-gravitating particles with a viscous and radiative
circumprimary disc within a binary star system. To our knowledge this program
is the only one at the moment that is capable to handle this many particles and
to calculate their influence on each other and on the disc. Methods. We
performed hydrodynamical simulations of a circumstellar disc assuming the
binary system to be coplanar. Our gridbased staggered mesh code relies on ideas
from ZEUS-2D, where we implemented the FARGO algorithm and an additional energy
equation for the radiative cooling according to opacity tables. To treat
particle motion we used a parallelised version of the precise Bulirsch - Stoer
algorithm. Four models in total where computed taking into account (i) only
N-body interaction, (ii) N-body and disc interaction, (iii) the influence of
computational parameters (especially smoothing) on N-body interaction, and (iv)
the influence of a quiet low-eccentricity disc while running model (ii). The
impact velocities where measured at two different time intervals and were
compared. Results. We show that the combination of disc- and N-body
self-gravity can have a significant influence on the orbit evolution of roughly
Moon sized protoplanets
Impact flux of asteroids and water transport to the habitable zone in binary star systems
By now, observations of exoplanets have found more than 50 binary star
systems hosting 71 planets. We expect these numbers to increase as more than
70% of the main sequence stars in the solar neighborhood are members of binary
or multiple systems. The planetary motion in such systems depends strongly on
both the parameters of the stellar system (stellar separation and eccentricity)
and the architecture of the planetary system (number of planets and their
orbital behaviour). In case a terrestrial planet moves in the so-called
habitable zone (HZ) of its host star, the habitability of this planet depends
on many parameters. A crucial factor is certainly the amount of water. We
investigate in this work the transport of water from beyond the snow-line to
the HZ in a binary star system and compare it to a single star system
Colliding Winds in Low-Mass Binary Star Systems: wind interactions and implications for habitable planets
Context. In binary star systems, the winds from the two components impact
each other, leading to strong shocks and regions of enhanced density and
temperature. Potentially habitable circumbinary planets must continually be
exposed to these interactions regions.
Aims. We study, for the first time, the interactions between winds from
low-mass stars in a binary system, to show the wind conditions seen by
potentially habitable circumbinary planets.
Methods. We use the advanced 3D numerical hydrodynamic code Nurgush to model
the wind interactions of two identical winds from two solar mass stars with
circular orbits and a binary separation of 0.5 AU. As input into this model, we
use a 1D hydrodynamic simulation of the solar wind, run using the Versatile
Advection Code. We derive the locations of stable and habitable orbits in this
system to explore what wind conditions potentially habitable planets will be
exposed to during their orbits.
Results. Our wind interaction simulations result in the formation of two
strong shock waves separated by a region of enhanced density and temperature.
The wind-wind interaction region has a spiral shape due to Coriolis forces
generated by the orbital motions of the two stars. The stable and habitable
zone in this system extends from approximately 1.4 AU to 2.4 AU. (TRUNCATED)Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, to be published in A&
Asteroid flux towards circumprimary habitable zones in binary star systems: I. Statistical Overview
So far, multiple stellar systems harbor more than 130 extra solar planets.
Dynamical simulations show that the outcome of planetary formation process can
lead to various planetary architecture (i.e. location, size, mass and water
content) when the star system is single or double. In the late phase of
planetary formation, when embryo-sized objects dominate the inner region of the
system, asteroids are also present and can provide additional material for
objects inside the habitable zone (hereafter HZ). In this study, we make a
comparison of several binary star systems and their efficiency to move icy
asteroids from beyond the snow-line into orbits crossing the HZ. We modeled a
belt of 10000 asteroids (remnants from the late phase of planetary formation
process) beyond the snow-line. The planetesimals are placed randomly around the
primary star and move under the gravitational influence of the two stars and a
gas giant. As the planetesimals do not interact with each other, we divided the
belt into 100 subrings which were separately integrated. In this statistical
study, several double star configurations with a G-type star as primary are
investigated. Our results show that small bodies also participate in bearing a
non-negligible amount of water to the HZ. The proximity of a companion moving
on an eccentric orbit increases the flux of asteroids to the HZ, which could
result into a more efficient water transport on a short timescale, causing a
heavy bombardment. In contrast to asteroids moving under the gravitational
perturbations of one G-type star and a gas giant, we show that the presence of
a companion star can not only favor a faster depletion of our disk of
planetesimals but can also bring 4 -- 5 times more water into the whole HZ.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&
First observations of beam losses due to bound-free pair production in a heavy-ion collider
We report the first observations of beam losses due to bound-free pair
production at the interaction point of a heavy-ion collider. This process is
expected to be a major luminosity limit for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
when it operates with 208Pb82+ ions because the localized energy deposition by
the lost ions may quench superconducting magnet coils. Measurements were
performed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) during operation with
100 GeV/nucleon 63Cu29+ ions. At RHIC, the rate, energy and magnetic field are
low enough so that magnet quenching is not an issue. The hadronic showers
produced when the single-electron ions struck the RHIC beampipe were observed
using an array of photodiodes. The measurement confirms the order of magnitude
of the theoretical cross section previously calculated by others.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Added journal ref. Corrected typos. Fixed fig 1.
Minor improvements to fig. 1,3,4. Rephrased a small number of sentences
(p1,3,4). Added numerical values of the aperture and the displacement for Au
(p 2). Changed reference 5, added name in acknowledgments (p 4
Recommended from our members
RHIC tracking studies with real magnets in real places
Results from RHIC tracking studies in which measured magnetic field errors are used in all arc magnets are reported. the dependence of betatron tunes on initial amplitudes, aspect ratio, and momentum are reported and are not significantly different from measured tune dependences when randomly generated magnetic field errors are used in all magnets. Survival plots at injection and storage are also consistent with previous determinations
An Overview of the 13:8 Mean Motion Resonance between Venus and Earth
It is known since the seminal study of Laskar (1989) that the inner planetary
system is chaotic with respect to its orbits and even escapes are not
impossible, although in time scales of billions of years. The aim of this
investigation is to locate the orbits of Venus and Earth in phase space,
respectively to see how close their orbits are to chaotic motion which would
lead to unstable orbits for the inner planets on much shorter time scales.
Therefore we did numerical experiments in different dynamical models with
different initial conditions -- on one hand the couple Venus-Earth was set
close to different mean motion resonances (MMR), and on the other hand Venus'
orbital eccentricity (or inclination) was set to values as large as e = 0.36 (i
= 40deg). The couple Venus-Earth is almost exactly in the 13:8 mean motion
resonance. The stronger acting 8:5 MMR inside, and the 5:3 MMR outside the 13:8
resonance are within a small shift in the Earth's semimajor axis (only 1.5
percent). Especially Mercury is strongly affected by relatively small changes
in eccentricity and/or inclination of Venus in these resonances. Even escapes
for the innermost planet are possible which may happen quite rapidly.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, submitted to CMD
- âŠ