Kozai effect on planetesimal accretion in highly inclined binaries

Abstract

Planet formation in highly inclined binaries is a complex issue. The Kozai mechanism plays an important role in this situation, since it will lead to high eccentricity and high relative impact velocity of planetesimals, thus hinder the planetesimal accretion. However, as we will show here, the presence of gas disk in some circumstance will suppress the Kozai effect by increasing the apsidal precession rate of the planetesimals, which increases the critical inclination. A criterion of the disk mass above which Kozai effect will not occur is given.