In the coming years, high contrast imaging surveys are expected to reveal the
characteristics of the population of wide-orbit, massive, exoplanets. To date,
a handful of wide planetary mass companions are known, but only one such
multi-planet system has been discovered: HR8799. For low mass planetary
systems, multi-planet interactions play an important role in setting system
architecture. In this paper, we explore the stability of these high mass,
multi-planet systems. While empirical relationships exist that predict how
system stability scales with planet spacing at low masses, we show that
extrapolating to super-Jupiter masses can lead to up to an order of magnitude
overestimate of stability for massive, tightly packed systems. We show that at
both low and high planet masses, overlapping mean motion resonances trigger
chaotic orbital evolution, which leads to system instability. We attribute some
of the difference in behavior as a function of mass to the increasing
importance of second order resonances at high planet-star mass ratios. We use
our tailored high mass planet results to estimate the maximum number of planets
that might reside in double component debris disk systems, whose gaps may
indicate the presence of massive bodies.Comment: Accepted to Ap
