Exomoons Of Circumbinary Planets

Exomoon discovery is on the horizon. Although several exomoon candidates exist around single stars, there are currently no candidates around circumbinary planets (CBPs).

Circumbinary planets are predicted to have migrated to their current location from a farther region of the protoplanetary disc where they formed. An exomoon of a CBP therefore represents a fascinating yet complex and evolving four-body system.

Their existence (or absence) would shed light on the robustness of moon formation in more dynamically active planetary systems. In this work, we simulate exomoons around migrating CBPs. We show that for fully migrated CBPs a moon is capable of surviving the migration if it is formed within ~5-10% of the planet’s Hill Radius.

Roughly 30-40% of the surviving moons are in the habitable zone, giving credence to circumbinary habitability even if the known CBPs all gas giants. The majority of moons fall off of their host planet early in the migration and become long-period CBPs (i.e a multi-planet circumbinary system).

A subset of exomoons are ejected from the system entirely. This last class presents a new mechanism for producing free-floating planetary mass objects, like those discovered recently and expected in the Roman microlensing survey.

Ben R Gordon, Helena Buschermöhle, Wata Tubthong, David V. Martin, Sean Smallets, Grace Masiello, Liz Bergeron

Comments: Under review at ApJ, community feedback welcome
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2412.02847 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2412.02847v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2412.02847
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Submission history
From: Benjamin Gordon
[v1] Tue, 3 Dec 2024 21:24:24 UTC (9,129 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.02847
Astrobiology