Disruption of Planetary System Architectures by Stellar Flybys

Przyłuski, R, Rickman, H, Wajer, P, Wiśniowski, T, Turrini, D, Polychroni, D, Danielski, C, Kruijssen, JMD, Longmore, S ORCID: 0000-0001-6353-0170 and Chevance, M (2025) Disruption of Planetary System Architectures by Stellar Flybys. Universe, 11 (8). ISSN 2218-1997

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Abstract

We investigate the survivability of solar system-like planetary systems during close encounters in stellar associations using a suite of 1980 N-body simulations. Each system is based on one of the possible five-planet resonant configurations proposed to represent the initial solar system architecture and is systematically scaled in both planetary mass and orbital compactness to explore the parameter space of observed exoplanetary architectures. Simulations explore a range of stellar encounter scenarios drawn from four distinct cluster environments. Our results show that system survival depends critically on the interplay between planetary mass and orbital scale: compact configurations are more resistant to external perturbations, while increased planetary mass improves resilience only up to a threshold, beyond which internal instabilities dominate. No system whose planets are twice as massive as the ones in the solar system survives stellar encounters. Systems that are at least an order of magnitude more compact than the solar system remain stable under typical encounter conditions. These findings place strong constraints on the initial architectures of planetary systems that can endure stellar-dense birth environments.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	planetary systems; N-body simulations; stellar encounters; stability; planets; solar system; chaos; 5109 Space Sciences; 51 Physical Sciences; 5101 Astronomical Sciences; 5101 Astronomical sciences; 5107 Particle and high energy physics
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	MDPI
Date of acceptance:	15 July 2025
Date of first compliant Open Access:	22 April 2026
Date Deposited:	22 Apr 2026 13:39
Last Modified:	22 Apr 2026 13:39
DOI or ID number:	10.3390/universe11080240
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/28432

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