Published July 1, 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Three-dimensional Orbital Architectures and Detectability of Adjacent Companions to Hot Jupiters

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon University of Wisconsin–Madison

Abstract

The orbital properties of the (as yet) small population of hot Jupiters with nearby planetary companions provide valuable constraints on the past migration processes of these systems. In this work, we explore the likelihood that dynamical perturbations could cause nearby inner or outer companions to a hot Jupiter to leave the transiting plane, potentially leaving these companions undetected despite their presence at formation. Using a combination of analytical and numerical models, we examine the effects of stellar evolution on hot Jupiter systems with nearby companions and identify several possible outcomes. We find that while inner companions are generally unlikely to leave the transiting plane, outer companions are more prone to decoupling from the hot Jupiter and becoming nontransiting, depending on the system's initial orbital architecture. Additionally, we observe a range of dynamical behaviors, including overall stability, inclination excitation, and, in some cases, instability leading to the ejection or collision of planets. We also show that the effect of stellar obliquity (with respect to the mean planet of the planets) is to amplify these effects and potentially cause outer companions to attain nonmutually transiting configurations more often. Our results highlight the complex dynamical pathways shaping the architectures of hot Jupiter systems.

Copyright and License

© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.

Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Acknowledgement

J.C.B. has been supported by a Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellowship. This research has been supported by Caltech Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS) computing and funding, as well as essential computing resources for simulations from Konstantin Batygin. We also thank the Caltech Housner Fund for providing funding. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System.

Software References

Rebound and Reboundx (D. Tamayo et al. 2020); Jupyter (T. Kluyver et al. 2016); pandas (W. McKinney 2010; The pandas development team 2020), matplotlib (J. D. Hunter 2007), numpy (C. R. Harris et al. 2020).

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Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2505.11637 (arXiv)

Funding

Heising-Simons Foundation
51 Pegasi b Fellowship
California Institute of Technology

Dates

Accepted
2025-05-12
Available
2025-06-25
Published

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)
Publication Status
Published