Abstract

Given their likely origin far from their present-day orbits, hot Jupiters (giant planets with orbital periods less than 10 days) present a powerful probe of the dynamical processing planets undergo following their formation. The reported excess of hot Jupiters in the old (4 Gyr) open cluster M67 compared to the Galactic field raises the question of the extent to which interactions in crowded cluster environments contribute to this processing. In particular, it has been suggested that close encounters with nearby stars may trigger high-eccentricity migration, thereby leading to enhanced hot Jupiter formation in dense environments. In this talk, I will present an efficient hybrid approach for modelling the secular and tidal evolution of planetary systems under the influence of stochastic perturbations from passing stars in an evolving cluster environment using a combination of analytic and numerical methods. I will discuss an application of the model to M67 and share some preliminary results linking the observed demographics to the primordial population of Jovian planets in the cluster.