Investigating Outcomes of Inner Planet Formation Influenced by a Jupiter-like Perturber

The most common planets within 1 AU of a star are a few Earth radii in size, dubbed ‘super-Earths.’ Yet our Solar system lacks a super-Earth, and potentially the presence of Jupiter played a role. For this project, we analyzed the outcomes of in situ inner planet formation under the influence of a massive outer planet. We conducted ninety-two N-body dynamical simulations of the in-situ formation process with a Jupiter-mass planet at a distance of 5 AU from the host star. We compared these to simulations with the same inner planet conditions without a massive outer planet. We conducted simulations in two stages: 1) during the residual protoplanetary disk phase with damped orbit eccentricities and 2) post-disk dispersal with subsequent dynamical evolution. We found that systems produced more planets at lower surface densities. The average mass and eccentricity of the inner planets were higher in systems that did not contain an outer Jupiter. There was a tendency for the average number of planets produced to be higher in simulations with an outer Jupiter.