Jiang-Hui Ji et al 2009 Res. Astron. Astrophys. 9 703 doi:10.1088/1674-4527/9/6/009
Jiang-Hui Ji1,2, Hiroshi Kinoshita3, Lin Liu4 and Guang-Yu Li1,2
Show affiliationsWe perform numerical simulations to study the secular orbital evolution and dynamical structure of the quintuplet planetary system 55 Cancri with the self-consistent orbital solutions by Fischer and coworkers. In the simulations, we show that this system can be stable for at least 108 yr. In addition, we extensively investigate the planetary configuration of four outer companions with one terrestrial planet in the wide region of 0.790 AU ≤ a ≤ 5.900 AU to examine the existence of potential asteroid structure and Habitable Zones (HZs). We show that there are unstable regions for orbits about 4:1, 3:1 and 5:2 mean motion resonances (MMRs) of the outermost planet in the system, and several stable orbits can remain at 3:2 and 1:1 MMRs, which resembles the asteroid belt in the solar system. From a dynamical viewpoint, proper HZ candidates for the existence of more potential terrestrial planets reside in the wide area between 1.0 AU and 2.3 AU with relatively low eccentricities.
97.82.-j Extrasolar planetary systems
Issue 6 (June 2009)
Received 12 September 2008, accepted for publication 17 February 2009
Jiang-Hui Ji et al 2009 Res. Astron. Astrophys. 9 703
A R Hamilton et al 2008 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 20 164205
Jean-Noël Aqua and Michael E Fisher 2004 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 37 L241
D J Smith et al 2003 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 36 1519
Leonid Polterovich and Zeev Rudnick 2001 Nonlinearity 14 1331
Zhang Jing-Tao and Xu Zhi-Zhan 2001 Chinese Phys. Lett. 18 1069
G A Bonvallet and J E Lawler 2003 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 36 1510
A T Collins et al 1988 J. Phys. C: Solid State Phys. 21 1363
Z Idris et al 2004 Modelling Simul. Mater. Sci. Eng. 12 995
C E Haynes et al 1994 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 6 2277