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TROJAN PLANET PACKING WITHIN THE HABITABLE ZONE OF ALPHA CENTAURI

Abstract

The Kepler Mission uncovered a multitude of exoplanet candidates, where astronomers identified two new classes of planet not found in our Solar System (e.g., Super-Earths and Mini-Neptunes). Some researchers proposed that Kepler could also discover planetary systems with Trojan planets, where two planets orbit the star at the same semimajor axis but separated by 60 degrees in orbital phase. The method of transit timing variations was responsible for two new classes, but the detection of a pair of Trojan planets remained elusive. We are motivated to investigate the possibility of Trojan planets in Alpha Centauri AB, given the tentative detection of a Trojan planet in PDS 70 using observations from ALMA (Balsalobre-Ruza et al. 2023). We simulate Trojan planets orbiting Alpha Cen A using the n-body simulation code rebound, which allows us to evaluate the stability of Trojan systems under the strong perturbation of a stellar companion (Alpha Cen B). We find that a pair of Trojan planets can orbit Alpha Cen A for ~50 kyr without significant changes in the planetary semimajor axes, which indicates that long-term stability is possible despite perturbations from the stellar companion. Our preliminary result suggests that Trojan planets in binaries are possible, which may double the prospects for habitable planets if such worlds are Earth-like.

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