Imperial College London
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DrJamesOwen

Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Physics

Senior Lecturer in Exoplanet Physics
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 5785james.owen CV

 
 
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Location

 

Blackett LaboratorySouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Owen:2017:mnras/stx1033,
author = {Owen, JE and Lai, D},
doi = {mnras/stx1033},
journal = {Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
pages = {2834--2844},
title = {Generating large misalignments in gapped and binary discs},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx1033},
volume = {469},
year = {2017}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Many protostellar gapped and binary discs show misalignments between their inner and outer discs; in some cases, ∼70° misalignments have been observed. Here, we show that these misalignments can be generated through a secular resonance between the nodal precession of the inner disc and the precession of the gap-opening (stellar or massive planetary) companion. An evolving protostellar system may naturally cross this resonance during its lifetime due to disc dissipation and/or companion migration. If resonance crossing occurs on the right time-scale, of the order of a few million years, characteristic for young protostellar systems, the inner and outer discs can become highly misaligned, with misalignments  60° typical. When the primary star has a mass of order a solar mass, generating a significant misalignment typically requires the companion to have a mass of ∼0.01–0.1 M and an orbital separation of tens of astronomical units. The recently observed companion in the cavity of the gapped, highly misaligned system HD 142527 satisfies these requirements, indicating that a previous resonance crossing event misaligned the inner and outer discs. Our scenario for HD 142527's misaligned discs predicts that the companion's orbital plane is aligned with the outer disc's; this prediction should be testable with future observations as the companion's orbit is mapped out. Misalignments observed in several other gapped disc systems could be generated by the same secular resonance mechanism.
AU  - Owen,JE
AU  - Lai,D
DO  - mnras/stx1033
EP  - 2844
PY  - 2017///
SN  - 0035-8711
SP  - 2834
TI  - Generating large misalignments in gapped and binary discs
T2  - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx1033
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/60485
VL  - 469
ER  -
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