Constraining the stability and habitability of circumbinary planets

Although most stars exist in binary and multi systems, very few circumbinary planets (CBP) have been identified and studied. Observational biases contribute significantly to this paucity, as the orbital regions close to binaries are often unstable due to overlapping secular resonances. As we continue to improve our data reduction and analysis techniques, we can start to detect more planets farther from their stars and will therefore detect more CBPs. Through thousands of N-body simulations, we constrain the stability regions of an injected terrestrial planet around low-mass binaries, integrating the systems for 1Gyr or until instability. We then explore the potential detection and habitability of such planets. Through the 1Gyr evolution of the system, we trace the top-of-atmosphere temperature of the simulated planets to constrain the fraction that could host liquid water on their surfaces. Then, using a simple energy-balance model, we study the evolution of the planets' surface temperatures to identify which could host regions of continuous surface water.