Habitability of Planets in Binaries.pdf

a r X i v : 0 7 1 0 .0 6 8 6 v 1 [ a s t r o - p h ] 3 O c t 2 0 0 7 **FULL TITLE** ASP Conference Series, Vol. **VOLUME**, **YEAR OF PUBLICATION** **NAMES OF EDITORS** Habitability of Planets in Binaries Nader Haghighipour Institute for Astronomy and NASA Astrobiology Institute, University of Hawaii-Manoa Abstract. A survey of currently known extrasolar planets indicates that close to 20% of their hosting stars are members of binary systems. While the majority of these binaries are wide (i.e., with separations between 250 and 6500 AU), the detection of Jovian-type planets in the three binaries of γ Cephei (separation of 18.5 AU), GL 86 (separation of 21 AU), and HD 41004 (separation of 23 AU) have brought to the forefront questions on the formation of giant planets and the possibility of the existence of smaller bodies in moderately close binary star systems. This paper discusses the late stage of the formation of habitable planets in binary systems that host Jovian-type bodies, and reviews the effects of the binary companion on the formation of Earth-like planets in the system’s habitable zone. The results of a large survey of the parameter-space of binary- planetary systems in search of regions where habitable planets can form and have long-term stable orbits are also presented. 1. Introduction Among the currently known planet-hosting stars, approximately 20% are mem- bers of binary systems (Haghighipour 2006). Although to observers, the exis- tence of such binary-planetary systems is not unexpected 1, to theorists, such extreme planetary environments pose major challenges to theories of planet for- mation. While observations of systems such as L1551 (Rodriguez et al. 1998) indicate that planet-forming circumstellar disks, with masses similar to the mass of the primordial nebula of our solar system, exist around the components of binaries (implying that planet-formation in dual-star systems can begin and proceed in the same fashion as around our Sun), sim