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# Dynamical Habitability of Known Extrasolar Planetary Systems

## 1 Introduction

As of August 2002, high-precision radial velocity surveys have revealed the presence of 97 low-mass companions around $`85`$ nearby Sun-like stars (Marcy, Cochran & Mayor 2000; see, e.g., the extrasolar planet almanac111http://exoplanets.org/almanacframe.html and encyclopedia222http://www.obspm.fr/encycl/encycl.html). The Jovian nature of these companions was confirmed by the observation of transits in the system HD 209458, which indicated the presence of a planet of mass $`M_p=0.69M_{\mathrm{Jup}}`$ and radius $`R_p=1.35R_{\mathrm{Jup}}`$ (in Jupiter units; Charbonneau et al. 2000; Henry et al. 2000; Mazeh et al. 2000). A striking feature of the planetary systems discovered by these surveys is their orbital configuration. In most cases, gaseous giant planets are either located in the close vicinity of their parent star, on nearly circular orbits, or further away from their star but then often on orbits with substantial eccentricities (see Table 1 and 3). These orbital configurations are clearly different from those in our own Solar System, where gaseous giants are located at least several AUs from the Sun, on low eccentricity orbits. The detection of giant planets with orbital characteristics comparable to those of Jupiter has been only recently announced (Marcy et al. 2002; Mayor et al. 2002).

It is reasonable to expect that extrasolar planetary systems discovered to date were not only able to form Jovian planets but probably also formed less massive, terrestrial planets (see, e.g., Ruden 1999). This raises the exciting possibility of the presence of life on a “suitable” terrestrial planet in known extrasolar planetary systems. The detection and the determination of the suitability for life of extrasolar planets around stars within $`20`$ pc of our Sun (including those already known to harbor Jovian planets) is the scientific motivation behind efforts to build a Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) within the next decade.333http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/TPF/tpf\_index.html

The suitability of a terrestrial planet to harbor life is usually referred to as habitability, and the region around a star in which a terrestrial planet’s atmosphere is able to sustain the necessary liquid water is labeled the habitable zone (see, e.g., Hart 1978; Kasting, Toon & Pollack 1988; Kasting, Whitmire & Reynolds 1993 and references therein; see §2.2 for details). The concept of atmospheric habitability can be complemented by a study of the orbital dynamics of a planetary system in order to better evaluate its “dynamical habitability.” Indeed, as opposed to Jupiter in our Solar System, the gravitational zone of influence of many extrasolar giant planets often approaches, or sometimes even overlaps with, the habitable zone of their parent system. As a consequence, terrestrial planets potentially located within these habitable zones could be significantly perturbed and possibly driven out of the habitable zone or the system altogether. It is the purpose of this study to quantify the importance of these dynamical effects on the habitability of known extrasolar planetary systems. Although dynamical effects on potentially habitable planets have already been investigated by several groups in the past (Gehman, Adams & Laughlin 1996; Jones, Sleep & Chambers 2001; Laughlin, Chambers & Fischer 2002; see also Rivera & Lissauer 2000, 2001), our study is different in the formulation of the problem adopted and in that it addresses the entire set of known extrasolar planetary systems. We compare our results with those of previous studies in §5.

In §2, we describe the sample of extrasolar planetary systems used in this work, the extent of their habitable zones and the size of the zone of influence of each individual gaseous giant planet. In §3, we describe and justify the method of orbital integration adopted, while the results of these integrations for all extrasolar planetary systems are presented in §4. Various consequences and implications of our results are discussed in §5.

## 2 Definitions

### 2.1 Known Extrasolar Planetary Systems

The sample of extrasolar giant planets used in this work is listed in Table 1 and 3 (for the most recently discovered planets), with relevant data on the distance to the system, the stellar mass, the planet’s mass (modulo the unknown orbital inclination), semi-major axis, orbital period and eccentricity. These data were taken from the compilation of all published survey results found in the extrasolar planet encyclopedia (see footnote 3), with some modifications when required. Consistency of values listed in the main catalog table with those given in tables specific to each system was verified. Eventual discrepancies were corrected by going back to the published values. We note that even orbital parameters estimated for a same system by different groups sometimes show discrepancies, so that values listed in Table 1 and 3 cannot all be considered as being accurate. We have verified that Table 1 and 3 are in very good overall agreement with the corresponding table published by the California and Carnegie Planet Search (in most cases, discrepancies are $`<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.1}`$ for the eccentricity and $`<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}10}20\%`$ for other orbital parameters). These uncertainties should not significantly affect our conclusions, since we are mainly interested in the global statistics of the entire set of systems.

It is worth mentioning here the limitations of current radial velocity surveys (see, e.g., Table 1 of Tabachnik & Tremaine 2002; Cumming et al. 2002). While the best Doppler shift precisions achieved are $`23`$ m s-1, which would guarantee that a stellar reflex motion of amplitude comparable to that of our Sun under the influence of Jupiter ($`13`$ m s-1) can be detected, a second important limiting factor for radial velocity surveys is their time coverage. The oldest surveys started about $`15`$ years ago, and since in practice an orbital solution is considered robust only once the planet has completed $`>\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}`$ full orbital revolutions, current surveys are limited to the detection of planets located within $`4`$-$`5`$ AUs of their parent star (see Table 1 and 3). Consequently, current surveys (with their limited time-coverage) would only marginally reveal the presence of Jupiter in an extrasolar planetary system identical to our Solar System located several tens of parsecs away, as evidenced by the only very recent detection of 55 Cnc d and Gl 777A b (Marcy et al. 2002; Mayor et al. 2002). Saturn (and all the other planets in the Solar System) would not have been detected by current surveys. This is an important point to keep in mind when we later compare dynamical habitability in our own Solar System to that in extrasolar planetary systems (see §3.5).

### 2.2 Atmospheric Habitability and Habitable Zones

#### 2.2.1 Habitable Terrestrial Planets

Various definitions of habitability have been used in the past (see Kasting et al. 1993 for a historical perspective), but it is now generally agreed that the development of carbon-based life requires liquid water in the atmosphere of a terrestrial planet over geological timescales (Kasting et al. 1993 and references therein; Rampino & Caldeira 1994). This relatively well-defined atmospheric requirement is not easily translated into orbital requirements for a planet around a star of given luminosity, however, because the planetary temperature is regulated by subtle atmospheric feedback mechanisms which are not all fully understood. For example, Hart (1978) constructed a model of planetary habitability which accounted for the evolution of the solar luminosity and included the runaway greenhouse effect and the planetary glaciation effect. Because these two effects are positive feedback mechanisms,444The greenhouse effect, which raises planetary surface temperatures, is itself stronger at higher temperatures because water vapor becomes more abundant in the atmosphere. This is the origin of a potential runaway. Similarly, glaciation results in a larger coverage of the planetary surface by snow/ice, which tends to reduce even more the planetary surface temperature by reflecting a larger fraction of the insolation flux. this author found a rather narrow radial extent for the habitable zone. By contrast, Kasting et al. (1993) showed that a much larger size for the habitable zone could be obtained if one accounts for the negative feedback mechanism of the carbon-silicate cycle (in particular the possibility of releasing CO2, a greenhouse effect gas, through volcanic activity even after planetary glaciation occurs).

The example above illustrates the subtleties involved in calculating the radial extent of habitable zones. Even the calculations of Kasting et al. (1993), that we use in the present work, are subject to uncertainties. The origin of these uncertainties is in the approximate treatment of H2O clouds, the neglect of CO2 clouds (which could significantly increase the outer radius of the habitable zone through a scattering variant of the greenhouse effect; Forget & Pierrehumbert 1997) and, to a lesser extent, dependences on atmospheric abundances (a CO2/H2O/N2 atmosphere is assumed in their calculations, but relative abundances different from those in Earth’s atmosphere can affect the extent of the habitable zone), on planetary mass (see below) and on biological influences (see Kasting et al. 1993 for a detailed discussion). These authors present their results on habitable zones under three different sets of assumptions. We use their intermediate case, corresponding to the “atmospheric runaway” and “maximum greenhouse effect” limits, by fitting the curves of radial extent for the habitable zone as a function of stellar mass given in their Fig. 15. The corresponding values for the inner and outer radii of habitable zones, accurate to within $`10\%`$ given our simple fitting procedure, are reported in Table 1 and 3 for each system.

We note that most of the extrasolar planetary systems listed in Table 1 and 3 have stars with low enough masses ($`<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1.2}M_{}`$) that the difference between zero-age main-sequence habitable zones and continuously habitable zones (which account for the increasing stellar luminosity with age) are very small for timescales $`<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}`$ Gyr. For simplicity, we only use zero-age main-sequence habitable zones here (which do not require us to specify stellar ages for each system). This choice is consistent with the limited integration time of $`10^6`$ yrs covered by our dynamical study, which thus describes, in each system, the first million years after giant planets stopped migrating and terrestrial planets were fully formed. A study over longer timescales, with continuously habitable zones, is beyond the scope of the present work.

Kasting et al. (1993) have also considered in their study the possibility that terrestrial planets may have masses different from that of Earth (the relevant parameter in their model being surface gravity). The authors argued that a terrestrial planet should be several times more massive than Mars (say $`>\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.3}M_{}`$) to retain its atmosphere over long geological timescales and to sustain tectonic activity as required for the carbon-silicate cycle to operate (see also Williams, Kasting & Wade 1997). They showed that planets of masses $`0.1M_{}`$ and $`10M_{}`$ have habitable zones comparable in size to that of an earth-mass planet (to within $`5\%`$). The upper limit of $`10M_{}`$ roughly corresponds to the onset of runaway gas accretion and gaseous envelope formation in standard planetary formation scenarios (see, e.g., Ruden 1999). In what follows, we will therefore use the habitable zone limits listed in Table 1 and 3 even when considering terrestrial planets with masses anywhere in the range $`0.3M_{}`$ to $`10M_{}`$.

We note that Gliese 876 (spectral type M4V, $`M_{}0.32M_{}`$) is unique among the systems listed in Table 1 and 3 in that a terrestrial planet located within the habitable zone of this system would also likely be tidally-locked to the central star (see Fig. 16 in Kasting et al. 1993). Joshi, Haberle & Reynolds (1997) have argued that the permanent day and (much colder) night sides on the planet, resulting from its synchronous rotation, may still allow the planet to be habitable because atmospheric circulation can efficiently redistribute heat from the day-side to the night-side and thus smooth out the large temperature gradients expected from pure radiative equilibrium balance. Tidal forces would also lead to circularization of the terrestrial planet orbit, an effect that may help retain terrestrial planets within the habitable zone but is not included in our dynamical study of this system.

#### 2.2.2 Habitable Moons of Giant Planets

Williams et al. (1997) have proposed that moons around extrasolar giant planets located within a system’s habitable zone could themselves be habitable. As for terrestrial planets, the moon must be massive enough ($`>\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.2}M_{}`$ in general) to both retain its atmosphere over long timescales and sustain the tectonic activity essential to the carbon-silicate cycle. Another important requirement for this moon is that it must possess a strong enough magnetic field to protect its atmosphere against the bombardment of energetic ions from the giant planet’s magnetosphere. Altogether, these are rather stringent requirements which nonetheless permit the existence of habitable moons in extrasolar planetary systems.

Williams et al. (1997) also noted the additional difficulty existing for habitable moons when large variations of the insolation flux are caused by the Jovian planet’s substantial eccentricity. We identify 19 cases in Table 1 and 3 for which the giant planet’s semi-major axis is located within the system’s habitable zone. However, only 5 such planets have eccentricities small enough to remain within the habitable zone during their entire orbital revolution (indicated by stars in the last column of Table 1 and 3). These are the planets which are most likely to harbor habitable moons. We note that these five planets are located far enough from their parent star (periastron distance $`>0.6`$ AU) that the mass of their potential moons are not dynamically constrained (Barnes & O’Brien 2002). Another possibility for the habitability of (distant) moons, that we will not discuss further here, is when the right conditions for the development of life are provided by tidal heating (as is thought to be the case on Europa).

### 2.3 Zone of Influence and Classes of Dynamical Habitability

The definition of a planet’s gravitational zone of influence often used in dynamical studies is 3 times its Hill radius,

$$R_{\mathrm{Hill}}a\left(\frac{M_p}{3M_{}}\right)^{\frac{1}{3}},$$
(1)
where $`a`$ is the planet’s semi-major axis, $`M_p`$ is the planet’s mass and $`M_{}`$ is the mass of the central star. Three Hill radii cover the region of close encounters with the planet, which typically result in collisions with the planet, the central star, or ejections from the system. Since a planet with finite eccentricity, $`e`$, experiences radial excursions from $`(1e)a`$ to $`(1+e)a`$, we generalize the definition of the planet’s zone of influence to include the entire region extending from $`R_{\mathrm{in}}=(1e)a3R_{\mathrm{Hill}}`$ to $`R_{\mathrm{out}}=(1+e)a+3R_{\mathrm{Hill}}`$. The values of the inner and outer radii of the zone of influence of all extrasolar giant planets are reported in Table 1 and 3 (a planetary mass corresponding to $`\mathrm{sin}i=0.5`$ was specifically assumed for these numerical estimates).

Based on the degree of overlap between the planet’s zone of influence (ZI) and the system’s habitable zone (HZ), we define 4 classes of dynamical habitability:

* Class I: $`a0.25`$ AU
* Class II: $`a>0.25`$ AU and no overlap between HZ and ZI
* Class III: $`a>0.25`$ AU and partial overlap between HZ and ZI
* Class IV: $`a>0.25`$ AU and HZ is fully inside ZI

Class I is defined to include close-in extrasolar giant planets which, because of their proximity to the parent star, should not gravitationally influence much planets in the habitable zone. The classes of all extrasolar giant planets are reported in the last column of Table 1 and 3. When two classes are given for a giant planet, they indicate the range of possible classes for the five values of inclination considered in our study (see §3.4). In systems with multiple giant planets, dynamical habitability will be determined by the planet which most strongly influences the habitable zone (i.e. of highest class, according to the definitions above). Accordingly, we also list in the last column of Table 1 and 3, in parenthesis, the highest dynamical class found among all planets in multiple planet systems.

Because of the complete overlap between zone of influence and habitable zone, systems containing class-IV giant planets are unlikely to harbor habitable terrestrial planets.555We note that it is in principle still possible for these systems to harbor habitable terrestrial planets at the stable Lagrange points of their giant planets. This possibility may be limited to the five giant planets identified in §2.2.2 as good potential hosts for habitable moons. It is more difficult to estimate the likelihood of finding habitable terrestrial planets in systems containing class-III giant planets, however, because the overlap is then only partial. In the next section, we describe how the dynamical habitability of all the systems listed in Table 1 and 3 can be quantified with detailed numerical simulations.

## 3 Orbital Integration Method

We perform a large number of integrations of the orbital dynamics of extrasolar planetary systems that include the presence of potential terrestrial planets within their habitable zones. For each system, the habitable zone is initially seeded with 100 terrestrial planets randomly distributed in semi-major axis. As a measure of dynamical habitability, we use the statistics of the fraction of these planets, treated as test particles, that remain in the habitable zone after a fixed amount of integration time. In §3.1, we describe our integration scheme. We validate the test particle approximation for terrestrial planets in §3.2 and we justify our choice of initial conditions for the integrations in §3.3.

### 3.1 Numerical Integration Scheme

We can safely rely on the second order mixed variable symplectic (MVS) integrator described by Wisdom and Holman (1991) for planetary systems with a single companion. For multiple-planet systems, Saha & Tremaine (1992; 1994) refined the integration scheme by adding individual planetary time steps which reduce considerably the CPU integration time (for the Solar System, the CPU gain is $`50\%`$). Both methods are tailor-made for long numerical integrations of planetary systems in which the central body is the dominant gravitational influence since symplectic properties prevent any spurious drift in Poincaré’s invariants caused by truncation errors. All our simulations include leading-order post-Newtonian relativistic corrections (Saha & Tremaine 1994), which are not negligible, especially for systems with close-in giant planets.

The integration time step is chosen to be $`1/12`$ of the shortest orbital period of all the planets in the system, which is either that of the closest-in giant planet or that of an hypothetical test particule with semi-major axis right at the inner edge of the habitable zone. This limiting value was empirically selected to ensure that the relative energy error has a peak amplitude of $`10^6`$ over the duration of the integrations. In systems with multiple giant planets, the ratio of respective time steps for giant planets is always taken to be an integer. For instance, the time step of Ups And b is 4.617/12=0.38 days while the time steps for the other two planets are in the ratio 1:50:200 (closest integer ratio satisfying the $`1/12`$ requirement for the individual timestep of each additional planet).

As integration proceeds, the orbits of terrestrial planets are carefully monitored. A terrestrial planet is removed from the integration if it meets one of the three following criteria:

* the terrestrial planet’s orbit became parabolic or hyperbolic (as determined by an osculating eccentricity $`1`$)
* the terrestrial planet experienced a close encounter with a giant planet (if it approached within $`3R_{\mathrm{Hill}}`$ of the giant)
* the terrestrial planet crosses the limits of the system’s habitable zone

The first condition corresponds to the terrestrial planet being ejected from the system altogether or colliding with the central star. The second condition is chosen because a close encounter almost certainly results in ejection from the system or collision with the giant planet or the central star.

The third condition is chosen so that a terrestrial planet is considered habitable only if it remains strictly within the habitable zone during the entire integration. Our main motivation to adopt this conservative definition of dynamical habitability (as opposed to the requirement that the planet’s semi-major axis remains within the habitable zone limits; see, e.g., Jones et al. 2001) is that it is presently unclear whether an excursion outside of the habitable zone, even if temporary, will allow the planet to remain habitable. In particular, we note that the radiative time constant of the earth’s atmosphere (over continental regions) is $`\tau _{\mathrm{rad}}c_pP_0/g4\sigma T_{\mathrm{rad}}^31`$ month, where $`c_p`$ is the heat capacity at constant pressure, $`P_0`$ is the atmospheric surface pressure, $`g`$ is the gravitational acceleration, $`\sigma `$ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant and $`T_{\mathrm{rad}}`$ is the radiative equilibrium temperature (the radiative time constant for Mars is even shorter, $``$ a few days). For $`\tau _{\mathrm{rad}}P_{\mathrm{orb}}`$, one expects the atmosphere to respond efficiently to seasonal variations of the absorbed stellar flux, which could potentially damage the planet’s habitability during excursions outside of the habitable zone.666The problem is further complicated by the fact that the radiative time constant of the atmosphere is larger by 1–2 orders of magnitude over large-heat-capacity oceanic regions (see, e.g., Williams & Kasting 1997; North, Mengel & Short 1983).. We postpone a more detailed discussion of the orbital requirements for dynamical habitability to a future publication and we adopt here a conservative definition of dynamical habitability which requires habitable terrestrial planets to remain strictly within the boundaries of their habitable zone. The effects on our results of relaxing this strict definition are also briefly discussed in §5.

### 3.2 Test Particle Approximation and Choice of Orbital Parameters

To simplify and speed up the calculations, we make two important approximations. First, we assume that terrestrial planets can be treated as test particles. Second, we use the various system parameters listed in Table 1 and 3 without accounting for the observational errors associated with them. We justify these two approximations below.

Terrestrial planets with masses between $`0.3M_{}`$ and $`10M_{}`$ are typically $`10^2`$$`10^3`$ times less massive than the giant planets listed in Table 1 and 3. The large mass ratios suggest that a test particle approximation is applicable. Since test particles are massless, they are gravitationally perturbed by giant planets but do not perturb each others nor the giant planet(s). This allows both the orbital integration of 100 test particles simultaneously and the free removal of any such particle at any time during integration (without change to the system’s Hamiltonian). This is an obvious advantage for our statistical study involving the orbital integration of 100 terrestrial planets in the habitable zones of each of the $`85`$ systems of interest.

Using the full potential of the test particle approximation by integrating the orbital dynamics of each system with 100 terrestrial planets at once also means that a unique set of values is used for the stellar mass $`M_{}`$,777The value of the stellar mass enters our models in the determination of the radial extent of the habitable zone. the minimum planet mass $`M_p\mathrm{sin}i`$, the orbital period $`P_{\mathrm{orb}}`$ and the eccentricity $`e`$. All these parameters are subject to observational errors, however, and it is a priori unknown what the influence of these errors might be on the resulting statistics of dynamical habitability (i.e. the number of remaining habitable planets).

To answer this question and validate the test particle approximation, we carried out the following test. We selected three representative single-planet systems of the dynamical classes II, III and IV, with well-documented observational errors. We also attributed an arbitrary $`15\%`$ error to the stellar masses. The list of planets, their orbital parameters and associated errors for these three systems are given in Table 4. For each system, we performed two sets of integrations for a total of 100 terrestrial planets each. In the first set of computationally-expensive calculations (experiment I), the orbital dynamics of each of the 100 terrestrial planets is integrated individually. The terrestrial planet semi-major axis is randomly chosen within the habitable zone, with a random mass between 0.3 and 10 $`M_{}`$ and a random inclination relative to the giant planet’s orbit between 0 and $`25^{}`$. The parameters for the giant planet’s orbit and the stellar mass (which determines the radial extent of the habitable zone in each of the 100 independent integrations) were generated as Gaussian deviates using the values and ($`1\sigma `$) errors quoted in Table 4. In the second set of computationally-affordable calculations (experiment II), terrestrial planets were treated as test particles (thus allowing the 100 terrestrial planet orbits to be integrated all at once), the giant planet’s orbital parameters and the stellar mass were fixed to their nominal values and the same uniform distribution of inclinations relative to the giant planet’s orbit as in experiment I was assumed. In both experiments, terrestrial planets were initially put on circular orbits and the giant planet’s mass was set to its minimum value (corresponding to $`\mathrm{sin}i=1`$ in column 3 of Table 4), thus maximizing the effects of finite masses for terrestrial planets in experiment I.

While experiment I represents a full statistical exploration of the problem, experiment II is a simplified version which makes use of the test particle approximation and neglects errors on estimated system parameters. The two experiments were integrated for $`10^7`$ yrs. Experiment I required approximately $`6`$ times more CPU time than experiment II to complete and would thus be prohibitively CPU–expensive to carry out for all extrasolar planetary systems listed in Table 1 and 3. Our test shows, however, that experiment II provides results in reasonably good agreement with those of experiment I for each of the three dynamical classes.

Figure 1 shows the distributions of semi-major axes, $`a`$, eccentricity, $`e`$, and inclination, $`i`$, at the end of experiments I (dotted line) and II (dashed line) for planets that remained within the habitable zone in the system HD 169830. The solid lines in the upper and lower panels of figure 1 show the initial distributions of $`a`$ and $`i`$ in experiment II. The mean and standard deviation of the final distributions of semi-major axis and eccentricity in experiments I and II are: $`a_\mathrm{I}=2.31\pm 0.22`$, $`a_{\mathrm{II}}=2.18\pm 0.13`$, $`e_\mathrm{I}=0.17\pm 0.09`$ and $`e_{\mathrm{II}}=0.16\pm 0.07`$. The good agreement between the final distributions in experiments I and II supports the validity of the approximations made in experiment II in the present context of a global statistical study. We note that the larger range of semi-major axis, $`a`$, for remaining planets in experiment I (upper panel; dotted line) is the result of variations of the stellar mass in that experiment, which determines the radial extent of the habitable zone. An additional discussion of the distributions shown in figure 1 can be found in §4.1.

The statistics of the number of planets remaining in the habitable zone(s) at the end of the numerical integrations (the quantity we are most interested in) agrees reasonably well for each test system in experiments I and II, as indicated by Table 5. It is reassuring to see the agreement even for the system HD 114783 which, on the one hand, presents the largest fractional errors in system parameters and, on the other hand, is probably the system most sensitive to initial conditions among the three because of the partial overlap between the giant planet’s zone of influence and the habitable zone. At the level of precision required by our study, these tests successfully validate the test-particle approximation and show that our results are not strongly affected by measurement errors on giant planet orbital parameters (and stellar mass).

### 3.3 Initial Conditions

Besides the initial semi-major axis (randomly distributed within the habitable zone), a number of orbital parameters for terrestrial planets have to be chosen. Angle variables, i.e. the argument of pericenter, the longitude of ascending node and the mean anomaly, are randomly distributed between $`0^{}`$ and $`360^{}`$ in all the integrations for terrestrial planets. In systems with a single giant planet, the giant is initially located at pericenter. In systems with multiple giant planets, the observationally constrained values of the time of periastron passage and argument of pericenter are consistently used in the integrations. Terrestrial planets initial eccentricities and inclinations (relative to the giant planet’s orbit) must be selected with care because the choice of distribution can potentially affect the statistical results.

Initially circular orbits do not necessarily minimize resonant effects with the giant planets. It is a well-known result of secular perturbation theory that an orbit with finite eccentricity, $`e`$, and inclination, $`i`$, can exhibit more stable properties than an orbit with zero eccentricity and inclination (see, e.g., Murray & Dermott 1999). Thus, by analogy with the observed distributions for the minor bodies in the Solar System,888see http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/MPDistribution.html we adopt Rayleigh distributions for the initial eccentricities and inclinations of terrestrial planets in our simulations,

$$P(r)=\frac{re^{\frac{r^2}{2s^2}}}{s^2},\mu =s\sqrt{\frac{\pi }{2}},\sigma ^2=\frac{4\pi }{2}s^2,$$
(2)
where $`r[0,\pi /2]`$ for the inclination and $`r[0,1]`$ for the eccentricity; $`\mu `$ and $`\sigma `$ are the traditional mean and variance of the distribution. Although each extra-solar system may have a specific value of $`s`$ that maximizes stability for terrestrial planets in the habitable zone, we use a unique value for all the systems to simplify our statistical analysis. We chose to fix the moments of the Rayleigh distribution in all our integrations to $`s(e)=0.05`$ and $`s(i)=5.2`$ for the initial eccentricity and inclination, respectively (unless noted otherwise). This choice is consistent with the observed distributions for minor bodies and typical values for terrestrial planets in the Solar System. We have confirmed that, in some systems, starting all terrestrial planets with zero eccentricity can result in a smaller number of remaining habitable planets than when the above Rayleigh distribution is used for initial eccentricities.

We performed a number of numerical experiments, based on the Equivalent Solar System defined below (see §3.5), to confirm that this choice of $`s(e)`$ and $`s(i)`$ is reasonable. Figure 2a shows how the number of remaining habitable planets depends on the values of $`s(e)`$ and $`s(i)`$ for both the Equivalent Solar System (solid line) and the test system HD 169830 (dashed line). The value of $`s(i)`$ was fixed at 5.2 when varying that of $`s(e)`$ and the value of $`s(e)`$ was fixed at 0.05 when $`s(i)`$ was varied. The typical evolution of the number of remaining habitable terrestrial planets with integration time is shown for the two systems in figure 2b in models with $`s(e)=0.05`$ and $`s(i)=5.2`$.

The number of remaining habitable terrestrial planets is a decreasing function of the value of $`s(e)`$, which determines both the mean and standard deviation of the Rayleigh distribution of initial eccentricities. More terrestrial planets cross the limits of their habitable zone early in the simulation if they are given larger initial eccentricities. The effect appears stronger for the Equivalent Solar System only because in HD 169830 the giant planet is efficient at perturbing terrestrial planet eccentricities even if they are initially small, while Jupiter is much less efficient at this (see, e.g., Fig. 7 and discussion below).

The results as a function of initial inclination do differ for the Equivalent Solar System and HD 169830, however (lower panel; Fig. 2a). In the case of HD 169830, there is no obvious dependence of the number of remaining habitable terrestrial planets with the value of $`s(i)`$ (which determines both the mean and standard deviation of the Rayleigh distribution of initial inclinations). For $`s(i)>\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}20}^{}`$, however, the number of remaining habitable terrestrial planets for the Equivalent Solar System is reduced. This is caused by the Kozai mechanism, which forces terrestrial planets to experience periodic cycles with large maximum eccentricities provided their initial inclination is in excess of $`3040^{}`$ (Kozai 1962). Those terrestrial planets starting with inclinations large enough to be subject to the Kozai mechanism are eventually forced to cross the limits of their habitable zone.

The choice $`s(i)=5.2`$ guarantees that less than 0.001% of our test particules start with inclinations in excess of $`25^{}`$. We note that this distribution of initial inclinations may imply that test particules in some of the studied extrasolar planetary systems start with inclinations in excess of the critical Kozai angle for that system (since it is a function of the ratio of orbital distances between the test particule and the giant; Kozai 1962). While this may be the reason why some test particules leave their habitable zone in some our simulations, we have not investigated this effect any further.

### 3.4 Giant Planet Masses and Inclinations

The masses, $`M_p`$, and orbital inclinations, $`i`$, of the giant planets listed in Table 1 and 3 are degenerate because only minimum masses, $`M_p\mathrm{sin}i`$, are directly measured. In general, no observational constraints exist on the inclination between the orbital and sky planes. For randomly oriented systems and in the absence of observational biases, the distribution of the cosine of the inclination ($`\mathrm{cos}i`$) is uniform. To sample the range of possible inclinations (or equivalently giant planet masses), we perform not just one but five integrations for each of the $`85`$ systems of interest, with $`\mathrm{sin}i=0.2n+0.1`$; $`n=0,\mathrm{},4`$. We also present our results averaged over these five inclination values. While a uniform $`\mathrm{cos}i`$ distribution favors large $`\mathrm{sin}i`$ values, we have found little dependence of our results on inclination except in a few isolated cases (see below). For simplicity, we have assumed zero mutual inclinations between giant planets in multiple-planet systems (there is support for low mutual inclinations in at least one extrasolar planetary system; see Chiang, Tabachnik & Tremaine 2001). This assumption should not affect our results in any significant way (although it might affect the dynamics of a system with eccentric giant planets close to resonance such as HD 82943).

We note that, for a deuterium-burning mass threshold of 13 $`M_{\mathrm{Jup}}`$, the total sample of objects considered in our study (averaging over the five inclination cases) comprises 78% of giant planets and 22% of brown dwarfs. Since our analysis is dynamical in nature, we see no reason not to include brown dwarfs in our calculations. Heating of terrestrial planets by brown dwarfs is negligible at the typical distances considered, so that we neglect this effect on the extent of the habitable zone (giant planet or brown dwarf heating is also negligible when considering the habitability of moons; Williams et al. 1997). The subdivision by dynamical class of the total sample of objects (averaged over inclinations) is as follows: 26% of class–I objects, 13% of class–II objects, 26% of class–III objects and 35% of class–IV objects.

### 3.5 Equivalent Solar System

Our definition of dynamical habitability is arbitrary. Although it is based on the intuitive idea that the gravitational influence of a giant planet might prevent the presence of terrestrial planets within the habitable zone of a planetary system, the quantitative measure of dynamical habitability that we obtain from our simulations (i.e. the number of remaining habitable planets after a fixed amount of integration time) is difficult to interpret by itself. It is possible, however, to compare this measure with its equivalent for the Solar System, in which we know of the presence of an habitable and inhabited planet, the Earth.

To make this comparison, we need to define an “Equivalent Solar System”, which is the Solar System as we would know it had it been detected only from tens of parsecs away with current radial velocity surveys. Our motivation to use this Equivalent Solar System comes from the possibility that additional, undetected planets in any of the extrasolar planetary systems studied here may modify their dynamical habitability properties significantly. Therefore, our Equivalent Solar System is defined as the Solar System subject to the same observational selection effects as extrasolar planetary systems. It only contains Jupiter, since this is the only planet that would have been detected by current surveys. An example of the biases avoided by comparing extrasolar planetary systems to the Equivalent Solar System is the destabilizing effect of overlapping resonances caused by Jupiter and Saturn’s orbital precessions in the Asteroid Belt: this effect is absent from the Equivalent Solar System model in the same way the influence of yet undetected giant planets in our models of extrasolar planetary systems is ignored.

The habitable zone of our Equivalent Solar System is taken to extend from 0.7 to 1.3 AU, for consistency with the values listed in Table 1 and 3. The zone of influence of Jupiter extends down to 3.9 AU only, making the Equivalent Solar System a class II system according to our definition in §2.3. By analogy with what is done for extrasolar planetary systems, we also investigate the effect of varying the mass of the giant planet in the Equivalent Solar System by running five different models with an assumed $`M_p\mathrm{sin}i=M_{\mathrm{jup}}/2`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}i=0.2n+0.1`$; $`n=0,\mathrm{},4`$ (the middle case $`\mathrm{sin}i=0.5`$ thus corresponds to $`M_p=M_{\mathrm{jup}}`$ and other cases show what the effects of varying Jupiter’s mass are).

## 4 Results

We have integrated the orbital dynamics of all $`85`$ extrasolar planetary systems listed in Table 1 and 3 and that of the Equivalent Solar System defined above, with 100 terrestrial planets (treated as test particles) in their habitable zones, for $`10^6`$ years. We describe our results in the following subsections.

### 4.1 Terrestrial Planet Orbits

Figure 35 illustrate the 3 types of terrestrial planet orbital evolution seen in our integrations through examples taken from our test particle (experiment II) integration of the HD 114783 system (§3.2). Some terrestrial planets experience a close encounter with a giant planet, generally early during the simulation (Fig. 5). Others remain at all time habitable, with a finite eccentricity allowing them, given their semi-major axis, not to cross the limits of their habitable zone (Fig. 3). Others see their eccentricity experience important secular variations, until they first cross the limits of the habitable zone (at which point they are no longer considered habitable; Fig. 4).

We found that secular eccentricity variations (see, e.g., Murray & Dermott 1999) play an important role for dynamical habitability. As the eccentricity of terrestrial planets are subject to these variations, one expects those closest to the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone to be the first to cross its limits. This gradual escape process is shown in figure 6, where the time at which planets first leave the habitable zone is plotted as a function of their semi-major axis at that time (for the experiment–II test calculation on HD 169830). Note the asymmetry in the escape process which makes planets closer to the inner edge of the habitable zone leave its boundaries faster than those close to the outer edge. We interpret this as being due to the presence of the giant planet on the inner side of the habitable zone in this system, making its influence on planets in the inner region of the habitable zone stronger. The effect of the 3:1 mean-motion resonance is also visible in figure 6, while the 5:2 and 4:1 resonances seem to have weaker effects on the escape process.

In general, mean-motion resonances are not the dominant effect leading to the escape of terrestrial planets from their habitable zone in our simulations. Table 6 lists $`p/(p+q)`$ mean-motion resonances of order $`q=1,2,3`$ up to $`p=10`$ in the habitable zones of class I and class–II systems only. None of the class–I systems has such a strong resonance within its habitable zone, while many of the class–II systems do. Figure 6 shows, however, that the effect of such resonances can be localized and that instead most escapes occur because of secular eccentricity variations. We also expect mean-motion resonances to be present in the habitable zones of class–III and class–IV systems, but many terrestrial planets also experience close encounters with a giant planet in these systems. We have not studied the relative importance of mean-motion resonances and close encounters in class–III and class–IV systems in more detail.

The asymmetry of the escape process in figure 6 suggests that secular eccentricity variations should be reduced in systems where the giant planet is further away from the habitable zone. This is confirmed by Figure 7, which compares the initial and final distributions of eccentricity in our fiducial models of the Equivalent Solar System and HD 169830. While the eccentricity distribution of terrestrial planets in the Equivalent Solar System model has barely evolved (whether these planets remained habitable or crossed the limits of their habitable zone), the evolution, up to eccentricities $`0.3`$ for remaining habitable planets, is obvious in the model of HD 169830.

The relative variation of insolation flux for a planet with eccentricity $`e`$ is the square of the ratio of apoastron to periastron distance, which amounts to $`(1+e)^2/(1e)^2`$. While global variations of order $`2030\%`$ of the insolation flux on the Earth did occur in the past when its eccentricity was as much as $`0.05`$ (standard Milankovitch theory999see, e.g., Hays, Imbrie & Shackleton 1976; http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Giants/Milankovitch/), the expected variations for some of the more eccentric habitable planets found in our simulations would be much larger than this (e.g. $`125\%`$ for $`e0.2`$). It is unclear whether planets experiencing such strong seasonal climate variations provide a good environment for the development of life (see Williams & Kasting 1997 for a related discussion of the climatic effects of regional flux variations caused by obliquity changes).

### 4.2 Global Statistics for Dynamical Habitability

Table 7 shows results from our large set of numerical simulations, in terms of the number of terrestrial planets remaining within their system’s habitable zone after $`10^6`$ years of integration. The number of remaining habitable planets is given for each of the five different orbital inclinations considered, together with the average over these five cases for each of the systems of interest. For comparison, the number of remaining habitable planets after $`10^6`$ years in models of the Equivalent Solar System are also listed.101010In all the models listed in Table 7, the adopted Rayleigh distribution of initial eccentricities causes a moderate number of terrestrial planets to cross the limits of their habitable zone during their first orbital revolution. The mean and standard deviation of the final distributions of semi-major axis ($`a`$), eccentricity ($`e`$) and inclination ($`i`$) of remaining habitable planets are also given in the last three columns of Table 7, individually for each extrasolar planetary system.

It is clear from Table 7 that our results show two populations of systems with drastically different dynamical habitability properties. About $`1/4`$ of all systems retain a high percentage ($`60`$$`80\%`$) of their initially habitable terrestrial planets, as does the Equivalent Solar System. This group, which are comparable to our Solar System in terms of dynamical habitability, is mostly comprised of systems containing close-in giant planets. The proximity of the giant planets from the parent star in these systems, and their predominantly small eccentricities, prevent them from gravitationally interacting much with terrestrial planets in the habitable zone. Of the 17 systems closer than 20 pc from us (probably the maximum distance of potential targets for TPF), only $`1/3`$ retain a high percentage of their initially habitable terrestrial planets and are thus comparable to the Solar System in terms of dynamical habitability.

A large number of systems (more than $`1/2`$) were not able to retain any (or almost any) terrestrial planet confined to their habitable zone by the end of the simulations. This group is mostly comprised of systems containing more distant giant planets on orbits with substantial eccentricities. Both the location of habitable zones typically around $`0.5`$$`2.0`$ AU and the large effective zone of influence of giant planets in these systems (because of their substantial eccentricities) are responsible for the strong perturbing influences on habitable terrestrial planets in these cases. The generally larger masses of distant extrasolar giant planets (as compared to generally less massive close-in planets; see Table 1 and Tabachnik & Tremaine 2002) also contribute to their stronger perturbing influence.

There is also a number of intermediate systems retaining a small ($`80\%`$) but finite number of habitable terrestrial planets. HD 169830 is an example of such systems where the proximity of the giant planet from the habitable zone leads to efficient escape of initially habitable planets (see discussion in §4.1). In these intermediate systems, we expect dynamically habitable planets to be rather localized within their system’s habitable zone: in the central regions of the habitable zone in class–II systems (see example of HD 169830 in Fig.1) and on the opposite side of the habitable region where close encounters with the giant planet occur in class–III systems. It is interesting to note that multiple-planet systems, as a group, are less dynamically habitable than single-planet systems. This reflects the fact that most multiple-planet systems (with the possible exceptions of 47 UMa and 55 Cnc) possess at least one class–III or class–IV planet whose influence is very disturbing to dynamical habitability. We have also observed that for certain choices of $`\mathrm{sin}i`$, some of the multiple giant planet systems themselves become unstable.

Table 9 shows the statistics of remaining habitable planets grouped by dynamical class. As expected, the stronger the overlap between the giant planet’s zone of influence and the habitable zone, the smaller is the number of remaining habitable terrestrial planets. Class I giant planets, as a group, are as dynamically habitable as our Solar System. The dynamical habitability of class–II and class–III systems is less than what we could have naively expected, however. While in class–II systems there is no overlap between the giant planet’s zone of influence and the habitable zone, only $`1/3`$ of initially habitable terrestrial planets for this group remain confined to the habitable zone after $`10^6`$ years, on average (see Table 9). This simply indicates that our definition of the zone of influence does not capture the effect of secular eccentricity variations caused by giant planets on the dynamical habitability of terrestrial planets. Similarly, the number of terrestrial planets remaining strictly confined to their habitable zone is almost zero for class III systems, as a group, while the overlap between the defined zone of influence and the habitable zone is only partial in their case.

Table 9 also lists for each dynamical class the average percentage of terrestrial planets that leave their habitable zone because of a close encounter with a giant planet. While close encounters never occur in class–I and class–II systems, they play an important role for the dynamical habitability of class–III and class–IV systems (by definition). The last four columns of Table 9 show, integrated over all members of each dynamical class (class IV excluded), the total number of remaining habitable planets and the mean and standard deviation of their final distributions of semi-major axis ($`a`$), eccentricity ($`e`$) and inclination ($`i`$). Terrestrial planet inclinations do not vary much in our integrations, so that the mean inclination for remaining habitable planets is close to what the initial mean was ($`6.3^{}`$). The mean eccentricity of remaining habitable terrestrial planets in class–I systems is also not that different from its initial value because of the only moderate influence of the giant planet on habitable planets in these systems. On the other hand, the mean eccentricity of remaining habitable terrestrial planets in class–II and class–III systems is significantly larger than its initial value because the perturbing influence of giant planets on the habitable zone region is felt more strongly in many such systems (but not in the Equivalent Solar System).

## 5 Discussion

We have presented an extensive set of dynamical integrations of known extrasolar planetary systems to evaluate how likely they are to harbor habitable terrestrial planets. A number of choices made in our numerical simulations, such as the initial conditions for terrestrial planet integrations, are arbitrary. In making these choices, however, we generally tried to pick conditions that maximize dynamical habitability. For example, by adopting the test particle approximation, we implicitly rejected the possibility that more than one “interacting” terrestrial planet could be present in the habitable zone of a system, which would generally reduce mutual chances of survival in that zone.

Despite this arbitrariness, we believe that our results offer a measure of dynamical habitability in extrasolar planetary systems through the important comparison with the Equivalent Solar System. For example, choosing the initial eccentricity of all our terrestrial planets to be zero instead of the Rayleigh distribution described in §3.3 would somewhat affect the number of remaining habitable planets reported in Table 7 and 9 (see Fig. 2). However, it would also affect the results for the Equivalent Solar System so that the comparison remains meaningful. Similarly, while more terrestrial planets may be found to leave their habitable zone after $`10^7`$ yrs than after $`10^6`$ yrs of integration (for instance), our practical choice of $`10^6`$ yrs equally affects results for the Equivalent Solar System and all extrasolar planetary systems.

Our results on the dynamical habitability of extrasolar planetary systems are affected by the ignorance resulting from observational selection effects. In several cases, multiple–planet systems were first discovered through the influence of the one planet closest to the parent star and additional planets were only subsequently detected. This bias affects all known extrasolar planetary systems. As additional planets are detected in a system, we expect their gravitational influence to make the system equivalent or less dynamically habitable than found in our models.111111Stabilizing secular resonances involving the presence of additional planets are possible, but they may be exceptions. Thus, as we learn more in the future about the planetary content of already known extrasolar planetary systems, their dynamical habitability (as estimated in our models) may well diminish. The number of remaining habitable planets listed in Table 7 may thus correspond to an upper limit to the dynamical habitability of these systems.

In that respect, it is significant that most of the extrasolar giant planets recently discovered (compare Table 3 to Table 1) are of the distant, eccentric type which is most disturbing to potentially habitable terrestrial planets. The discoveries of 55 Cnc d and Gl 777A b show, however, that Doppler surveys just began to reveal distant, low-eccentricity giant planets which are more akin to the Solar System giants and do not perturb potentially habitable terrestrial planets significantly. While the Solar System is expected to remain roughly as dynamically habitable as estimated in our equivalent–model when the other three giant planets are included, the dynamical habitability of known extrasolar planetary systems will mostly depend on whether radial velocity surveys establish or rule out the presence of giant planets with strongly perturbing influences at $`0.5`$$`2`$ AU distances from the parent star.

Our results are generally in good agreement with those of previous, system–specific studies, when one accounts for the discovery of additional planets in some of the systems of interest (e.g. in 47 UMa; Gehman et al. 1996; Rivera & Lissauer 2000; 2001). The work closest to ours is that of Jones et al. (2001), where the authors integrated the orbital dynamics of potentially habitable terrestrial planets in only four systems, but for a much longer period of time than in our simulations. While our results are consistent with those of Jones et al. for the most part, our investigation also differs in a number of ways, most importantly in our emphasis on a statistical comparison to the Equivalent Solar System and in the conservative definition we adopted for the dynamical habitability of terrestrial planets (Jones et al. only require the planet semi-major axis to remain at all time within the habitable zone).

The issue of the orbital requirements for a terrestrial planet to be dynamically habitable is important. While we argued that even temporary excursions outside of the habitable zone may be damaging to the habitability of a terrestrial planet, based on the relatively short radiative time constant of the Earth’s atmosphere (§3.1), one could use the much larger thermal inertia of Venus’ dense atmosphere as a possible counter-example. It will thus be important to determine more accurately in the future what the orbital requirements for dynamical habitability are. We note that even if we were to relax our definition of dynamical habitability by only requiring the terrestrial planet’s semi-major axis to remain confined to the habitable zone, our main conclusions would not be much affected. Close encounters would still efficiently remove terrestrial planets from the habitable zones of all class–IV systems (i.e. systems containing at least one class–IV planet), which constitute about half the total sample. The number of remaining habitable planets in intermediate class–II and, to some extent, class–III systems would be significantly larger than estimated in our study because these are the systems where secular eccentricity variations play the most important role. It is also possible that mean-motion resonances become more determinant for the dynamical habitability of class-III systems in that case.

It is interesting to speculate on the possible existence of planetary systems containing only terrestrial planets (i.e. lacking gaseous giant planets). The observed distribution of circumstellar disk masses around young stars suggests that this situation could occur in systems with low-mass disks (see, e.g., Beckwith & Sargent 1996). A possible measure of the expected number of systems containing only terrestrial planets comes from the inference by Tabachnik & Tremaine (2002), based on the observed planetary mass function, that $`3\%`$ of Sun-like stars harbor planets in the gaseous giant mass range, while a larger $`18\%`$ may harbor terrestrial planets.

Systems containing only terrestrial planets, if they exist, would not be subject to the perturbing influence of giant planets which was the focus of the present study. From that point of view, they would appear as better environments for habitable planets than currently known extrasolar systems. Even this point is not clear, however, because another dynamical effect may reduce the habitability of terrestrial planets in the habitable zones of these hypothetical systems: the standard scenario for the formation of a cometary Oort cloud in our Solar System (see, e.g., Duncan, Quinn & Tremaine 1987) would not apply to these systems, so that the number of remaining minor bodies in the inner regions of these planetary systems may be large. The resulting secular flux of asteroid impacts on terrestrial planets may then be large enough to have damaging effects on potentially habitable planets.

Interestingly, this additional dynamical effect, which deserves further attention, may also be important for a large number of the known extrasolar planetary systems that were classified as being as dynamically habitable as the Solar System in our study. Most of those possess close-in giant planets (located further in than the habitable zone) which would not protect in any way habitable terrestrial planets from a large flux of cometary impacts (as does Jupiter in the Solar System). It is unclear how strong cometary fluxes in these systems should be because giant planet migration may have affected the properties of their cometary clouds significantly (Hansen 2002). Finally, we note that the planetisimal-scattering migration scenario may not allow for the formation of any terrestrial planet in systems containing close-in giant planets because, in this picture, migration from large distances is associated with the efficient clearing of the pre-existing disk of planetisimals (Murray et al. 1998).

The discovery of distant extrasolar giant planets with orbital properties preventing them from perturbing potentially habitable terrestrial planets and such that they offer a protection from possibly large fluxes of cometary impacts may thus be of great interest in the future. Marcy et al. (2002), based on their discovery of 55 Cnc d, estimate that giant planets with orbital characteristics comparable to those of Jupiter exist around about 1 out of 50 nearby Sun-like stars. Microlensing searches for planets in the 1–10 AU range could ideally complement radial velocity surveys for this task (see, e.g., Gaudi 2002), since the latter become increasingly time-prohibitive at large orbital distances.

## 6 Conclusion

We investigated the orbital dynamics of known extrasolar planetary systems in the presence of potentially habitable terrestrial planets. We adopted a conservative definition of dynamical habitability by requiring that habitable planets never cross the limits of their habitable zone. We find that more than half the known extrasolar planetary systems are unlikely to harbor habitable terrestrial planets because of the strong perturbing influence of giant planet(s) in the vicinity of their habitable zones. Still, about a quarter of the known systems, including a third of the potential (nearby) targets for TPF, are promising in that they appear as dynamically habitable as our own Solar System. Some terrestrial planets labeled as dynamically habitable in our study have substantial eccentricities ($`e>0.1`$) which may lead to large seasonal climate variations and potentially damaging effects for habitability.

## Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to B. Hansen, J. Lissauer and S. Tremaine for useful discussions and to L. Hernquist for comments on the manuscript. Support for this work was provided by NASA through Chandra Fellowship grant PF9-10006 awarded by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for NASA under contract NAS8-39073. ST acknowledges support from an ESA Research Fellowship.


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# Multi-lepton Production at High Transverse Momentum in 𝑒𝑝 collisions at HERA

## 1 Introduction

The measurement of rare processes provides a unique method to search for new physics. At HERA, two experiments (H1 and ZEUS) study electron-proton collisions with a center of mass energy of 300 to 320 GeV. In this paper we shortly describe the first measurement of multi-electron and multi-muon production at high transverse momentum ($`P_T`$) in $`ep`$ collisions at HERA .

## 2 Multi-lepton Processes

Within the Standard Model (SM) the production of multilepton events in $`ep`$ collisions is possible mainly through photon-photon interactions, where quasi-real photons radiated from the incident electron and proton interact to produce a pair of leptons $`\gamma \gamma \mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}`$ . The GRAPE Monte Carlo generator  interfaced to full detector simulation has been used to simulate multi-lepton production. This generator is based on the full electro-weak matrix element calculation at tree level. The scattered proton or its remnants is treated in three phase space regions: elastic, quasielastic and inelastic.

The main experimental backgrounds to multi-electron production are processes where, in addition to a true electron, one or more fake electrons may be reconstructed from the final state particles. The dominant contribution is expected from Neutral Current Deep Inelastic Scattering (NC-DIS) where a fake electron from the hadrons or a radiated photon is selected together with the scattered electron. Elastic Compton scattering can also contribute if the high $`P_T`$ photon is misidentified as an electron. Background for multi-muon events are processes where fake muons are reconstructed from isolated hadrons. This contribution is negligible.

## 3 Measurement of multi-electron events

Both the H1 and ZEUS experiments are complex detectors with very good lepton identification capabilities. The electron identification is based on calorimetric information together with tracking conditions for efficient background rejection.

Electrons are measured by both H1 and ZEUS in a large acceptance range $`5^{}<\theta _e<175^{}`$, where $`\theta _e`$ is the electron polar angle measured with respect to the outgoing proton direction. The electron energy measured from calorimetric information has to be above 5 GeV. This energy threshold is increased in H1 analysis to 10 GeV for electrons candidates with $`\theta _e<20^{}`$. The ZEUS analysis requires the electron energy above 10 GeV for $`\theta _e<164^{}`$. The electron candidates have to be isolated from other calorimetric deposits. In the central region defined by $`20^{}<\theta _e<150^{}`$ for the H1 analysis and $`17^{}<\theta _e<164^{}`$ for the ZEUS analysis, an isolated charged track measured in the central tracking system has to be associated to the calorimetric deposit. The identified electrons are indexed in decreasing transverse momentum $`P_T`$: $`P_T^{e_i}>P_T^{e_{i+1}}`$.

The selection of multi-electron events is based on the requirement of two central electrons with large energy or transverse momentum. Both H1 and ZEUS analysis require the first central electron to have transverse momentum above 10 GeV. The second central electron is required to have $`P_T^{e2}>5`$ GeV ($`E^{e2}>10`$ GeV) in H1 (ZEUS) analysis. Any other electron identified is also counted and the selected events are classified by the number of identified electrons in the event.

The results of H1 and ZEUS analyses are presented in the table 1. The H1 analysis on an event sample corresponding to 115 pb-1 measured 121 multi-electron events, while ZEUS, with an integrated luminosity of 130 pb-1 detected 217 such events. The di-electron sample is dominated by the signal with a 15-20% contribution from the background. In the tri-electron sample, the background contribution is negligible. Both H1 and ZEUS observations are in good agreement with the predicted rates. The main difference between H1 and ZEUS acceptances for the signal is due to different angular range for the central electrons.

The distributions of the invariant mass of the two highest $`P_T`$ electrons are shown in figures 1 and 2. Data are in good overall agreement with the Standard Model prediction. A few events with masses $`M_{12}>100`$ GeV are observed in a region where the standard model prediction is low. H1 measured 3 di-electron events for 0.25 expected. ZEUS observed 2 di-electron events for 0.77 expected. In the tri-electron sample, H1 observed 3 events with $`M_{12}>100`$ GeV for an expectation of 0.23 while ZEUS do not observe events in that mass region where the expectation is 0.37. For the high mass di-electron events, the transverse momenta of the two electrons is also large (above 50 GeV). The topology of the observed tri-electron high-mass events is different: the transverse momenta of the two highest $`P_T`$ electrons is lower (around 30 GeV) and the high mass value is associated with a larger polar opening angle between the two electrons (“forward-backward” topology).

## 4 Measurement of multi-muon events

Muons are identified using central tracker reconstructed tracks, calorimetric deposits and muon chamber signals. A search for multi-muon events has been performed by the H1 and ZEUS experiments in the angular range $`20^{}<\theta <160^{}`$. At least two muons are required with $`P_T^{\mu 1,2}>2`$ GeV ($`P_T^{\mu 1,2}>5`$ GeV) in H1 (ZEUS) analyses. With an analyzed data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 105 pb-1, the ZEUS analysis detects 200 events for an expectation of 213$`\pm 11_{stat}`$. The H1 analysis of an integrated luminosity of 70 pb-1 found 1242 multi-muon events in good agreement with the prediction of 1253$`\pm 125_{stat.syst.}`$.

No event with two muons at high mass $`M_{\mu \mu }>100`$ GeV is observed by either experiment. Starting from the 3 high mass di-electron events observed by H1 the expected observation should be of the order of one di-muon event with $`M_{12}>100`$ GeV, due to the lower efficiency and luminosity in the multi-muon channel. The expected increase in luminosity at HERA II will improve the knowledge of the high mass region and allow a better comparison between electron and muon channels.

Figure 3 presents the visible cross section measured by H1 as a function of the invariant mass of the muon pair compared to the Standard Model prediction. Backgrounds and also other sources of muon pair production like heavy hadron decays are negligible. Very good agreement with the Standard Model prediction is observed up to 80 GeV over a four order of magnitude decrease in the cross section. The integrated cross section in the visible phase space has been measured to be $`46.5\pm 4.7`$ pb in good agreement with the prediction of 46.2 pb.

The H1 collaboration has measured separate cross-section for inelastic muon pair production. Inelastic events contain hadrons attributed to the proton dissociation detected in the main calorimeter or in the forward components of the detector. The inelastic cross section has been measured by H1 to be $`20.8\pm 3.3`$ pb in agreement with the expected cross section of 21.5 pb.

## 5 Conclusions

Events with two or three visible leptons(electrons or muons) have been measured for the first time in electron-proton collisions by H1 and ZEUS experiments. Good overall agreement with the Standard Model prediction is observed. In the multi-electron analysis, several events with invariant mass of the two highest $`P_T`$ electrons $`M_{12}>100`$ GeV have been observed. Multi-muon events have also been detected and the differential cross section has been measured and found in very good agreement with the Standard Model. No event with two muons at high mass $`M_{\mu \mu }>100`$ GeV is observed by either experiment. The increase in luminosity expected at HERA II will improve the knowledge of multi-lepton production at high transverse momenta and high mass.