Capture of free-floating planets by stellar systems

Understand

Evidence of exoplanets with orbits that are misaligned with the spin of the host star may suggest that not all bound planets were born in the protoplanetary disk of their current planetary system.

• Observations have shown that free-floating Jupiter-mass objects can exceed the number of stars in our galaxy, implying that capture scenarios may not be so rare.
• To address this issue, we construct a three-dimensional simulation of a three-body scattering between a free-floating planet and a star accompanied by a Jupiter-mass bound planet.
• We distinguish between three different possible scattering outcomes, where the free-floating planet may get captured after the interaction with the binary, remain unbound, or "kick-out" the bound planet and replace it.