A&A 596, A9 (2016)

DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201629567 Astronomy

c ESO 2016
&
Astrophysics

Constraints on the size and dynamics of the J1407b ring system

Steven Rieder1, 2 and Matthew A. Kenworthy2

1
RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science, 7-1-26 Minatojima-minami-machi, Chuo-ku, Kobe, 650-0047 Hyogo, Japan
2
Sterrewacht Leiden, Leiden University, PO Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]

Received 22 August 2016 / Accepted 28 September 2016

ABSTRACT

Context. J1407 (1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6 in full) is a young star in the Scorpius-Centaurus OB association that underwent a
series of complex eclipses over 56 days in 2007. To explain these, it was hypothesised that a secondary substellar companion, J1407b,
has a giant ring system filling a large fraction of the Hill sphere, causing the eclipses. Observations have not successfully detected
J1407b, but do rule out circular orbits for the companion around the primary star.
Aims. We test to what degree the ring model of J1407b could survive in an eccentric orbit required to fit the observations.
Methods. We run N-body simulations under the AMUSE framework to test the stability of Hill radius-filling systems where the
companion is on an eccentric orbit.
Results. We strongly rule out prograde ring systems and find that a secondary of 60 to 100 MJup with an 11 yr orbital period and
retrograde orbiting material can survive for at least 104 orbits and produce eclipses with similar durations as the observed one.
Key words. planets and satellites: dynamical evolution and stability - planets and satellites: rings

1. Introduction To this end, we construct a model containing J1407, its com-

panion J1407b and a co-planar disc around J1407b; based on the
Giant planet formation consists of the transfer of material from model in Kenworthy & Mamajek (2015). In Sect. 2, we describe
the circumstellar environment to the circumplanetary environ- this model and the parameters we investigate in this article. We
ment. The change in angular momentum of the circumstellar ma- run simulations of this model using AMUSE1 (Pelupessy et al.
terial results in the formation of a disk of gas and dust surround- 2013; Portegies Zwart et al. 2013) with the Rebound/WHFast2
ing the protoplanet (Ward & Canup 2010; Alibert et al. 2005). (Rein & Liu 2012; Rein & Tamayo 2015) N-body integrator. We
In our Solar system, the primordial gas is no longer present, but give the resulting disc sizes and eclipse durations in Sect. 3 and
evidence of the circumplanetary disk exists in the form of copla- discuss our results and the consequences in Sect. 4.
nar moons and rings (e.g. see review by Tiscareno 2013). All
Solar system gas giant ring systems show structure. This struc-
ture consists of gaps in the rings themselves and sudden changes 2. Description of the J1407b ring models
of particle density as a function of radius from the planet.
To investigate how the extent of a ring system around J1407b
The K5 pre-MS 16 Myr-old star J1407 showed a complex would change over time, we create a model consisting of J1407,
series of eclipses in 2007, lasting a total of 56 days, and a series companion J1407b on an eccentric orbit around J1407 and a disc
of papers investigating the J1407 system (Mamajek et al. 2012; of N particles around J1407b, initially in either prograde or ret-
Van Werkhoven et al. 2014; Kenworthy et al. 2015; Kenworthy rograde circular orbits. Since the height to diameter ratio of the
& Mamajek 2015) conclude that there is a secondary substel- J1407b exorings is <0.01 (Mamajek et al. 2012), we limit our
lar companion (called J1407b) with a giant multi-ring system in model to be co-planar with the secondary’s orbit.
orbit around the primary star. The ring system shows detailed For the orbital parameters of J1407b, we choose values based
structure down to the temporal resolution set by the diameter of on the best fits found by Kenworthy et al. (2015). For all models,
the primary star and their mutual relative projected velocity. A we choose a period of 11 yr, resulting in a semi-major axis a of
study of the stability of a Hill sphere-filling system on a circular 5.0 ± 0.1 AU, and a mass M of J1407 of 1.0 M . We set the
orbit has been explored in Zanazzi & Lai (2016). The derived di- J1407b mass m to values between 20 and 100 MJup in steps of
ameter of the ring system combined with the observational limits 20 MJup , as Kenworthy et al. (2015, Fig. 15) constrained the mass
set on the companion J1407b (as described in Van Werkhoven of J1407b for elliptic orbits to be up to 100 MJup .
et al. 2014; Kenworthy et al. 2015) imply that J1407b is on an We assume that the eclipse was observed at or very near its
eccentric orbit about J1407. pericentre, since the orbital velocity is highest at this point and
In this paper we investigate the effects of an elliptical orbit J1407b would likely have been detected if the long axis of the or-
on the stability of the ring system surrounding J1407b. Our goal bit were not aligned to the line of sight (Kenworthy et al. 2015).
is to determine whether there are any bound orbital solutions for
the secondary companion that can explain both the derived rela- 1
http://amusecode.org
2
tive velocity and the duration of the eclipse seen towards J1407. http://rebound.readthedocs.io

Article published by EDP Sciences A9, page 1 of 5

 A&A 596, A9 (2016)

Table 1. Orbital parameters of J1407b used for the different models. ring structure is left to future study. Since the mass of the disc is
negligible compared to the secondary’s mass, we ignore the in-
Model e vperi m ternal dynamics of the disc and make the disc particles massless,
(km s−1 ) (MJup ) speeding up the calculations. At the start of each simulation, the
secondary is at apastron, where the star’s initial influence on the
A 0.70 32.5 ± 0.4 20, 40, 60, 80, 100
system is minimal. We then run each model twice, once with
B 0.65 29.5 ± 0.4 20, 40, 60, 80, 100
prograde and once with retrograde orbiting particles.
C 0.60 27.3 ± 0.3 20, 40, 60, 80, 100
As the simulation progresses, we remove all particles beyond
2 AU from the secondary; well beyond the Hill radius. We then
calculate the eclipse duration at pericentre from the most distant
4 particle on both sides of the star-secondary axis (dmin and dmax )
and the secondary’s velocity relative to the star at that moment
(vperi ) (Eq. (2)).
2
Separation [AU]

T eclipse = (dmax − dmin )/vperi . (2)

0
3. Size of the system
We simulate 105 yr (∼9090 orbits of the secondary) of orbital
2 evolution of the system, and compare the initial distribution of
particles to their final distribution, noting the radius within which
particles remain bound to the companion.
4 In Fig. 2, we plot the particle density of model B80, which
has an initial radius of 0.53 AU. In the left panel, we show the
2 0 2 4 6 8 10
Separation [AU] system at initialisation; with black, red and blue particles repre-
senting particles that are unbound, bound in the retrograde case
Fig. 1. Orbit of J1407b model B80, with J1407b located at pericentre. only and bound in the prograde case, respectively. In the mid-
The J1407b system (red) is shown to scale for the initial size of the dle and right panels we illustrate the same system after 105 yr
model. The size of the star (orange) is exaggerated by a factor 20. Grey of evolution for the retrograde and prograde case, respectively,
circles indicate the distance to the star in AU, while the black ellipse using red for the retrograde case and blue for the prograde case.
shows the orbit. We find that prograde disc systems are severely dis-
rupted, losing all particles initially further out than 0.45 ±
The pericentric velocity of the system is 32 ± 2 km s−1 0.01 RHill within a few passages; whereas retrograde systems are
(Kenworthy et al. 2015, Fig. 11). This velocity is inferred from stable out to much larger radii, gradually losing all particles with
the stellar radius and the steepest gradient in the light curve, with an initial radius over 0.64 ± 0.04 RHill . This is in agreement with
the second-steepest gradient resulting in a velocity of 18 km s−1 . classical results from e.g. Toomre & Toomre (1972), who studied
To account for these velocities, while also investigating a slightly similar interactions on a galaxy scale, and Morais & Giuppone
less extreme case, we choose values between 0.6 and 0.7 for the (2012), who studied 3-body systems on planetary scale.
eccentricity e. This results in pericentric velocities between 27 We also find that the initially circular ring particles become
and 33 km s−1 and pericentric distances between 1.5 and 2.0 AU. increasingly eccentric due to the periodic forcing of the compan-
In Fig. 1 we show the orbit of model B80 as an example. We ion’s eccentric orbit and periastron passage (in a similar manner
summarise the selected values in Table 1. as the effect described by Thébault et al. 2006). This initially
We initially place particles on equidistant rings, with equal leads to spiral patterns in the distribution of particles, which
distance between particles in each ring. We choose the number wind up, and are difficult to detect after more than a few hundred
of particles in the nth ring to be 1 + 6n. To prevent artificially orbits.
created rings, we then change the radial distance of each particle The radius after 105 yr, measured along the axis perpen-
by a random value drawn evenly between ±0.5×∆R (with ∆R the dicular to the star-secondary axis, is 0.75 ± 0.04 × RHill and
distance between rings). We create 50 rings, scaling the system 0.46 ± 0.02 × RHill for retrograde and prograde systems, respec-
so that the outer ring is initially at the Hill radius of the system tively. We use these values to plot the theoretical eclipse duration
calculated at the companion’s pericentre (Eq. (1) Hamilton & for all systems with an eccentricity between 0.59 and 0.71 and a
Burns 1992). This results in initial radii ranging from 0.29 AU companion mass between 10 and 110 MJup in Fig. 3. In Fig. 4,
(for model C-20) to 0.66 AU (for model A-100). we show the evolution of the eclipse duration for each of our
 m 1/3 models at pericentre between 3000 and 105 yr, combined with
RHill = a(1 − e) · (1) the expected values from the observations. While the prograde
3M systems only show a small change in eclipse duration during this
Since the star’s influence is smallest for the innermost orbits, we time, the change in the retrograde systems is much larger, with
limit the inner radius to 0.25 × RHill . This eliminates the first the eclipse duration shortening by about 10 days.
12 rings of particles, while a significant fraction of orbits within The eclipse durations are up to ∼40 days for prograde mod-
the Hill radius is covered. As the timestep of our simulation els. These models can therefore not explain the 56 day duration
scales with the orbital period of the particles, this also speeds of the J1407b eclipse. These models would require either a much
up our simulation. The total number of disc particles in each of more massive companion or a much less eccentric orbit to work
our models is N = 6992. as a solution (Eq. (1)). Since a less eccentric orbit would result in
In this article, we limit ourselves to investigating the extent a lower transverse velocity, this would be inconsistent with the
to which a disc can survive, while the creation and evolution of derived velocity of 32 ± 2 km s−1 from Kenworthy et al. (2015).
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 S. Rieder and M. A. Kenworthy: Constraints on the size and dynamics of the J1407b ring system

Fig. 2. Particle distributions for model B80, initial configuration (left, at apocentre) and after 105 yr for the retrograde (middle) and prograde (right)
cases, respectively; both at pericentre. In the initial configuration; black, red and blue particles represent particles that are stripped, bound in only
the retrograde case and bound in the prograde case, respectively.

Fig. 3. Theoretical eclipse duration for retrograde (left) and prograde (right) systems, based on the size obtained from our simulations. Lines
indicate equal eclipse durations (given in days), dashed lines are plotted for 56 ± 4 days. The positions of our models are indicated with squares.

80 C B A In contrast, the eclipse lasts up to ∼80 days for some of the

retrograde models. In particular the highest-mass B models can
70 have eclipses that last long enough, while still being within the
Eclipse duration [days]

margin of error for the derived velocity. If the system formed

60 100
80 recently, lower values for the companion’s mass or orbits with
60 higher eccentricity may also provide a solution in agreement
50
40 100 with the observations. We therefore conclude that a giant ring
80
40 20 60 system as proposed in Mamajek et al. (2012) can be a dynam-
100 40 ically stable solution, but only if the rings are on a retrograde
80 80100
30 60 20 60 orbit, for relatively large masses of J1407b.
40 80100 40
60
20 20 40 20 80100
20 4060
20
1026 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 4. Results and discussion
Velocity [km/s] 4.1. Results from the simulations
Fig. 4. Evolution of the eclipse duration at pericentre for the simula-
Our main results from the simulations can be summarised as
tion models. The hashed blue region indicates the observed duration of
56 ± 4 days, while the hashed turquoise region indicates the observed follows:
velocity of 32±2 km s−1 . The upper models with the longer eclipse dura- Retrograde ring systems can exist for at least 105 yr and pro-
tion are the retrograde models, the lower models are the prograde ones. duce eclipses that last 56 days in duration with a projected veloc-
The colour bar indicates the age of the model in log10 -scale: lightest is ity consistent with that seen in the observational data (see Fig. 4).
after 3000 yr, while darkest is after 105 yr. No prograde ring systems are large enough to explain the dura-
tion of the eclipse, since the outer rings are scattered within one
Similarly, Kenworthy et al. (2015) restricts the mass of J1407b to or two orbits of the companion. Retrograde ring systems are typ-
be <100 MJup at 3σ. As a result, any stable prograde orbit would ically 1.4 times the size of prograde ring systems, consistent with
be inconsistent with the observed and derived orbital parameters similar results from other simulations (Toomre & Toomre 1972;
of J1407b. Morais & Giuppone 2012).
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 A&A 596, A9 (2016)

We constrain the mass of the secondary companion to be Processes that generate additional dust and ice in the J1407b
larger than the mass of 20 MJup expected by Kenworthy et al. Hill sphere may well include the tidal disruption of bodies that
(2015), closer to 100 MJup for the longest transit durations. are captured by the gravity of J1407b, as suggested for the ice
Initially circular particle orbits in the retrograde disc systems rings of Saturn (Canup 2010) and as seen in our own solar system
become eccentric over time. As a result, particles starting within when comets are tidally disrupted and captured by Jupiter, for
the stable radius may be stripped. When the orbits change from example the tidal disruption of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in
circular to more eccentric, spiral patterns are seen in the distri- July 1992 (Sekanina et al. 1994) that resulted in a string of icy
bution of particles, but these disappear over time. cores surrounded by a dust cloud.
The presence of large numbers of comets in young planetary
systems has been seen towards the beta Pictoris system (Ferlet
4.2. Discussion et al. 1987; Lagrange-Henri et al. 1988, 1989; Kiefer et al. 2014)
Lifetime of rings
and those seen in transit towards KIC 8462852 (Boyajian et al.
2016).
We simulate a disc of circumsecondary material for a period of Two possible tests for this hypothesis are (i) to carry out
105 yr. On this timescale, the discs shrink from RHill to 0.46 RHill transmission spectroscopy of the ring system during the next
and 0.75 RHill for pro- and retrograde orbits, respectively. For eclipse and determine the age of the rings by looking for recently
prograde orbits, this process is quick (within several orbits), ground up material; and (ii) to see if the generated and disrupted
whereas retrograde orbits shrink more gradually. dust is observed at thermal and longer wavelengths and at radii
Since the system is significantly larger than its Roche limit larger than the Hill sphere.
(which is on the order of 0.001 AU for a Moon-like object), satel-
lites may form in the disc. This is supported by the observed gaps Uncertainty dominated by radius of star
in the eclipse (Kenworthy & Mamajek 2015). The timescale on The relative velocity of the star and ring system is derived from
which such satellites would form may help constrain the age of the gradient of the light curve measured towards J1407 (see
the ring system around J1407b. Eq. (11) in Van Werkhoven et al. 2014),
Our simulations assume no new material is added to the sys-
tem. However, on a timescale of 105 yr, we consider it likely to vring ∝ L̇R∗ ,
be replenished by material from a variety of sources, as J1407
is a young and dynamically active system (see Sect. 4.2 for a where the star is observed to change brightness at a maximum
discussion of possible replenishment sources). The longer dis- rate of approximately 3 L∗ day−1 . The diameter of the ring sys-
ruption timescale of retrograde systems would allow them to tem is simply vring T eclipse and relative velocity of the ring system
keep their size for a longer time in this case, while the disrup- is directly proportional to the radius of the star, and our greatest
tion timescale for prograde systems is too short. uncertainty in the size of the giant ring system is dominated by
the uncertainty of the stellar size (Kenworthy et al. 2015).
There is no direct measurement of the radius of the star, and
Retrograde rings it will not be resolvable using ground-based interferometers in
the forseeable future, so we use the luminosity and effective tem-
One of the strongest results out of our simulations is the implica- perature from stellar evolution models to derive the radius of the
tion that the rings are in retrograde motion. The additional stabil- star. Additional constraints are set by rotational broadening of
ity of retrograde ring solutions over the equivalent prograde ring spectral absorption lines measured using CORALIE (Kenworthy
solutions is to the point that we can rule out all prograde ring so- et al. 2015), imposing a radius of R∗ > 0.93 ± 0.02 R . If the as-
lutions from being consistent with the observations. Explaining sumed radius of the star is smaller than stellar models predict,
how a retrograde ring system in an highly eccentric orbit around then the relative velocity and diameter of the ring system be-
a young star came to be contributes additional complexity to the come smaller. This also decreases the derived eccentricity of the
giant exoring model presented in Kenworthy et al. (2015). orbit of J1407b, easing the dynamical problem we face in this
Two of the eight planets in our Solar system show evidence paper.
of giant impacts that resulted in high planetary inclinations with
respect to the Ecliptic. In these cases, both the rings and planet Non-azimuthal structures in the rings
have a large enough obliquity so that both planet and rings are
retrograde. It is possible that such a collision between two rocky An alternative explanation is that there is additional internal
bodies in orbit around a planet results in a significant amount of structure in the ring system that is non-azimuthally symmetric.
retrograde moving material in the Hill sphere of J1407b, result- The vector addition of J1407b’s orbital motion with the orbital
ing in the rings we see today. Given that the height to diameter motion of ring material can explain the high relative velocity,
ratio of the J1407b exorings is <0.01 (Mamajek et al. 2012) and discussed in Van Werkhoven et al. (2014). As shown by our sim-
that there is radial structure at all spatial scales, the system is ulations, non-radial structures develop during periastron passage
dynamically cold and any such retrograde generating event must on dynamically short timescales that are comparable to the du-
have happened a dynamically long time ago. ration of the transit.

5. Conclusions
Replenishment of rings
We have performed simulations that consist of a companion on
The ring lifetime may be boosted beyond that seen in our sim- an eccentric orbit consistent with the most probable orbital pa-
ulations via a process of replenishment of the rings. For debris rameters as detailed in Kenworthy et al. (2015). A disk com-
disks, a collisional cascade from a reservoir of large bodies gen- posed of particles initially orbiting the secondary in circular or-
erates micron sized material that is seen in reflected light obser- bits out to the Hill radius are added and the simulation is run
vations (Backman & Paresce 1993; Dent et al. 2000). for 105 yr. The particles are run in both a prograde orbital sense

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 S. Rieder and M. A. Kenworthy: Constraints on the size and dynamics of the J1407b ring system

and a retrograde sense. As expected, the prograde ring system Acknowledgements. We are grateful to Nathan de Vries, Lucie Jílková, Masaki
loses a significant portion of its mass in a few orbits, and we Iwasawa, Erin L. Ryan and Eric Mamajek for many useful discussions, sug-
gestions and comments that helped shape this work. We would also like to ac-
do not find a stable prograde ring system consistent with the knowledge the anonymous referee, whose comments helped improve this article.
observed orbital parameters and eclipse duration. For the retro- Finally, we are grateful to David Mikolas for alerting us to an inconsistency in
grade ring system, we find it retains a larger fraction of its mass an earlier version of this article.
out to larger radii, and for the proposed orbital parameters of
J1407b, a disk size and orbital velocity consistent with observa-
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