Willy Kley - October 27, 2017

The dynamics of circumbinary disks - and embedded planets

One of the more exciting discoveries of extrasolar planets has been the detection
of planets that orbit a binary star, similar to the Tatooine system. Concerning
the formation of such systems one has to study the dynamical behaviour of disks
around binary stars and model the evolution of embedded planets. In the talk I
will present recent results of numerical simulations concerning the structure and
dynamics of circumbinary disks. I will show that these typically become eccentric
and undergo a slow prograde precession, and will present a newly found bifurcation
feature that indicates different excitation mechanisms of the disk eccentricity.
Sample evolutions of embedded planets for some well known systems will be
presented and I will show that the planets are indeed parked near the inner edge,
albeit slightly outside their observed locations, and point out their interesting
dynamical behaviour.