Testing a hypothesis of the ν Octantis planetary system

We investigate the orbital stability of a putative Jovian planet in a compact binary ν Octantis reported by Ramm et al. We re-analysed published radial velocity data in terms of a self-consistent Newtonian model and we found stable best-fitting solutions that obey observational constraints. They correspond to retrograde orbits, in accord with an earlier hypothesis of Eberle & Cuntz, with apsidal lines anti-aligned with the apses of the binary. The best-fitting solutions are confined to tiny stable regions of the phase space. These regions have a structure of the Arnold web formed by overlapping low-order mean motion resonances and their sub-resonances. The presence of a real planet is still questionable, because its formation would be hindered by strong dynamical perturbations. Our numerical study makes use of a new computational Message Passing Interface framework MECHANIC developed to run massive numerical experiments on CPU clusters.