Stochasticity of Planetary Orbits in Double Star Systems

Cosmogonical theories as well as recent observations allow us to expect the existence of planets around many stars other than the Sun. On an other hand, double and multiple star systems are established to be more numerous than single stars (such as the Sun), at least in the solar neighborhood. We are then faced to the following dynamical problem: assuming that planets can form in a binary early environment (I do not deal here with), does long-term stability for planetary orbits exist in double star systems.Although preliminary studies were rather pessimistic about the possibility of existence of stable planetary orbits in double or multiple star systems, modern computation have shown that many such stable orbits do exist (but possible chaotic behavior), either around the binary as a whole (P-type) or around one component of the binary (S-type), this latter being explored here.The dynamical model is the elliptic plane restricted three-body problem; the phase space of initial conditions is systematically explored, and limits for stability have been established. Stable S-type planetary orbits are found up to distance of their "sun" of the order of half the periastron distance of the binary; moreover, among these stable orbits, nearly-circular ones exist up to distance of their "sun" of the order of one quarter the periastron distance of the binary; finally, among the nearly-circular stable orbits, several stay inside the "habitable zone", at least for two nearby binaries which components are nearly of solar type.Nevertheless, we know that chaos may destroy this stability after a long time (sometimes several millions years). It is therefore important to compute indicators of chaos for these stable planetary orbits to investigate their actual very long-term stability. Here we give an example of such a computation for more than a billion years.