TYCHO: Simulating the Lives of Exoplanets within Stellar Clusters
Abstract
As we discover an ever-increasing amount of planets around other stars within the Galaxy, our insights into their evolution from stellar debris disks to fully-fledged worlds are constantly put to the test. To fully understand the diverse population of exoplanets, we must turn to study their early lives within open clusters, the birthplace of most field stars. Indeed, when we study planets within clustered environments, we notice highly eccentric and odd systems that seem to indicate the importance of dynamical pathways created by interactions with additional bodies (like in the case of HD 285507b). However, it has proven difficult to investigate these effects as many current numerical solvers for the multi-scale N-Body problem are simplified and limited in scope. To remedy this, we aim to create a physically complete computational solution to explore the role of stellar close encounters and interplanetary interactions in producing the observed exoplanet populations for both open cluster stars and field stars. We present a new code, TYCHO, which employs a variety of different computational techniques, including multiple N-body integration methods; close encounter handling; modified Monte Carlo scattering experiments; and a variety of emperically informed initial conditions. Herein, we discuss the methodology in detail, its implementation within the AMUSE software framework and some initial promising applications to exoplanet surveys.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #233
- Pub Date:
- January 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AAS...23324738G