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A Numerical Survey Of Multi-Planet Systems’ Inclination Excitation And Survival Under The Influence Of An Oblate, Tilted Star, Kathleen M T Schultz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Among the many exciting and thought-provoking discoveries facilitated by the Kepler telescope, one of the most puzzling is the very large proportion of systems with only a single transiting planet in them, relative to the number of systems with multiple transiting planets. Given that most of these multis are close together and have low mutual inclinations, and that planetary systems tend to form in such a configuration, the next logical step is to guess that at least some of the singles are part of multi-planet systems with large mutual inclinations between planets, excited by some other object’s gravitational perturbations. A …