RESEARCH PAPER: The dynamical architecture and habitable zones of the quintuplet planetary system 55 Cancri

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• Kinoshita, Hiroshi
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• Liu, Lin
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• Li, Guang-Yu

Abstract

We 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.