Seminars at FGG
Clues on the frequency of circumbinary planets in wide orbits
Speaker: Mariangela Bonavita (INAF - Oss. Astr. di Padova)
Date and time: 2014-05-05 12:30
Regardless of the details of the formation processes, there are by now many indications that the presence of a close stellar companion influences the formation and evolution of a planetary system. Various studies have been conducted on the impact of binary on the properties of planets, mainly focusing on circumstellar planets in moderately close and wide binary systems. The recent discoveries of planets orbiting both the components of very tight binary systems has drawn the attention of the community towards these challenging targets, known as circumbinary planets. Direct imaging (DI) represent a complementary technique to search for these planets at wider separations than those explored with transit technique, also considering binaries with larger separations. Here we present the results of a detailed statistical analysis on a sample of about 100 close binaries for which DI observations were available in the literature, and deep enough to reach the planet domain at separations consistent with stable circumbinary orbits. The aim of the analysis is to put some constraint on the frequency of planets in wide circumbinary orbits, by testing several assumptions on the planet formation methods.