Stability and self-organization of planetary systems

Rentao Pakter, Yan Levin
(Submitted on 25 Jan 2018)

We show that stability of planetary systems is intimately connected with their internal order. An arbitrary initial distribution of planets is susceptible to catastrophic events in which planets either collide or are ejected from the planetary system. These instabilities are a fundamental consequence of chaotic dynamics and of Arnold diffusion characteristic of many body gravitational interactions. To ensure stability over astronomical time scale of a realistic planetary system — in which planets have masses comparable or those of planets in the solar system — the motion must be quasi-periodic. A dynamical mechanism is proposed which naturally evolves a planetary system to a periodic state from an arbitrary initial condition. A planetary self-organization predicted by the theory is similar to the one found in our solar system.

Subjects:    Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Chaotic Dynamics (nlin.CD); Popular Physics (physics.pop-ph)
Cite as:    arXiv:1801.08575 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1801.08575v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Yan Levin
[v1] Thu, 25 Jan 2018 19:26:50 GMT (102kb)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.08575