Eric Jensen (Swarthmore College) : What young binaries can tell us about extrasolar planet formation, migration, and orbital evolution

Many of the initially-surprising properties of extrasolar planets - eccentric orbits, hot Jupiters, orbits misaligned with stellar spin axes - have been explained theoretically as possibly arising from the dynamical influence of a stellar binary companion on an orbit that is inclined with respect to the planetary orbital plane. To date, however, there has been little observational evidence as to whether or not binary orbits and planetary orbits are aligned with each other. I will review past observational work on this issue, and present new ALMA results showing at least one case of significant misalignment between the binary orbital plane and protoplanetary disk plane, showing that these misalignment-dependent mechanisms for driving migration or orbital evolution may indeed be relevant for some planetary systems. I will also discuss observations of lithium depletion in some nearby young binaries, and their implications for the planet-formation timescale.