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N. Haghighipour (Carnegie Institution of Washington, Dept. Terrestrial Magnetism )
In an attempt to explain the small (< 1AU) radii orbits of some of the recently discovered extrasolar planets (see http://exoplanets.org/science.html), Del Popolo, Gambera and Ercan (2001) have shown that giant planets can migrate inward in a planetesimals disk due to dynamical friction between the planet and the planetesimals.
I present here the results of a systematic numerical study of the orbital dynamics of a restricted, planar and circular three-body planetary system subject to dynamical friction of a homogeneous medium. The purpose of this study is to investigate the conditions under which dynamical friction can cause an inward or outward type I migration as well as a resonance capture. It is shown here that the direction of migration, the numerical value of the established commensurability and the duration of the resonance depend on the values of the density of the medium and the masses of the planets and the central star.
Del Popolo A., Gambera M., Ercan N., 2001, MNRAS, 325, 1402