[7.04] Resonant inclination excitation of migrating giant planets

DPS 35th Meeting, 1-6 September 2003
Session 7. Extra Solar Planets I
Oral, Chairs: R. V. Yelle and R. A. Brown, Tuesday, September 2, 2003, 3:30-5:30pm, DeAnza I-II

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[7.04] Resonant inclination excitation of migrating giant planets

E. W. Thommes, J. J. Lissauer (NASA Ames)

The observed orbits of extrasolar planets suggest that many giant planets migrate a considerable distance towards their parent star as a result of interactions with the protoplanetary disk, and that some of these planets become trapped in eccentricity-exciting mean motion resonances with one another during this migration. Using three-dimensional numerical simulations, we show that resonant migration can also systematically excite large orbital inclinations in pairs of giant planets. Such a mechanism may operate commonly in the early evolution of a planetary system, and a significant fraction of exoplanetary systems may turn out to be non-coplanar. In fact, non-coplanar embedded planets have already been invoked as an explanation for the warped disk of Beta Pictoris.

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