* Astronomy

Title: The California Planet Survey III. A Possible 2:1 Resonance in the Exoplanetary Triple System HD 37124
Authors: J. T. Wright, Dimitri Veras, Eric B. Ford, John Asher Johnson, G. W. Marcy, A. W. Howard, H. Isaacson, D. A. Fischer, J. Spronk, J. Anderson, J. Valenti

We present new radial velocities from Keck Observatory and both Newtonian and Keplerian solutions for the triple-planet system orbiting HD 37124. The orbital solution for this system has improved dramatically since it was first reported in Vogt et al. 2005, where the third planet was reported with an ambiguous orbital period. The period ambiguity is resolved, and the outer two planets have an apparent period commensurability of 2:1. A dynamical analysis finds both resonant and non-resonant configurations consistent with the radial velocity data, and constrains the mutual inclinations of the planets to be less than about 30 degrees. We discuss HD 37124 in the context of the other 20 exoplanetary systems with apparent period commenserabilities, which we summarise in a table. We show that roughly one in three well-characterized multiplanet systems has a apparent low-order period commensuribility, which is more than would naively be expected if the periods of exoplanets in known multiplanet systems were drawn randomly from the observed distribution of planetary orbital periods.

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