Secular Chaos and the Production of Hot Jupiters

Understand

In a planetary system with two or more well-spaced, eccentric, inclined planets, secular interactions may lead to chaos.

• The innermost planet may gradually become very eccentric and/or inclined, as a result of the secular degrees of freedom drifting towards equipartition of angular momentum deficit.
• Secular chaos is known to be responsible for the eventual destabilization of Mercury in our own Solar System.
• Here we focus on systems with three giant planets.