2017/05/10 by Daniel Tamayo, Hanno Rein, Cristóbal Petrovich +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Astro and Planetary Science #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #High-pressure geophysics and materials
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/2041-8213/aa70ea
openalex publication_date 2017/05/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract TRAPPIST-1 is a late M-dwarf orbited by seven Earth-sized planets with orbital period ratios near a chain of mean motion resonances. Due to uncertain system parameters, most orbital configurations drawn from the inferred posterior distribution are unstable on short timescales of ∼0.5 Myr, even when including the eccentricity damping effect of tides. By contrast, we show that most physically plausible resonant configurations generated through disk migration are stable even without tidal dissipation on timescales of at least 50 Myr (10 10 orbits), an increase of at least two orders of magnitude. This result, together with the remarkable chain of period ratios in the system, provide strong evidence for convergent migration naturally emplacing the system near an equilibrium configuration forced by the resonant chain. We provide an openly available database of physically plausible initial conditions for TRAPPIST-1 generated through parameterized planet–disk interactions, as well as bit-by-bit reproducible N -body integrations over 10 9 –10 10 orbits.