Paper detail

Birth environment of circumbinary planets: are there CBPs on the inclined orbits?

The inclination distribution of circumbinary planets (CBPs) is an important scientific issue. It is of great significance in estimating the occurrence rate of CBPs and studying their formation and evolution. Although the CBPs currently discovered by the transit method are nearly coplanar, the true inclination distribution of CBPs is still unknown. Previous researches on CBPs mostly regarded them as an isolated binary-planet system, without considering the birth environment of their host binaries. It is generally believed that almost all stars are born in clusters. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the impact of the close encounters of stars on the CBP systems. This article discusses how the close encounters of fly-by stars affect the inclination of CBP. Based on extensive numerical simulations, we found that CBPs in close binary with a spacing of about 0.2 au are almost unaffected by star fly-bys. Their orbits remain coplanar. However, when the spacing of the binary stars is greater than 1 au, the 2-3 fly-bys of the intruding star can excite a considerable inclination even for the CBP near the unstable boundary of the binary. For the planets in the outer region, a single star fly-by can excite an inclination to more than 5 degrees. Especially, CBPs in near polar or retrograde orbits can naturally form through bianry-star encounters. If close binaries are born in open clusters, our simulations suggest that there may be high-inclination CBPs in binaries with spacing > 1 au.