Based on a suite of Monte Carlo simulations, I show that a stellar-mass dependent lifetime of the gas disks from which planets form can explain the lack of hot Jupiters/close-in giant planets around high-mass stars and other key features of the observed semimajor axis distribution of radial velocity-detected giant planets. Using reasonable parameters for the Type II migration rate, regions of planet formation, and timescales for gas giant core formation, I construct synthetic distributions of jovian planets. A planet formation/migration model assuming a stellar mass-dependent gas disk lifetime reproduces key features in the observed distribution by preferentially stranding planets around high-mass stars at large semimajor axes.
With the advent of direct imaging spectroscopy, the number of spectra from brown dwarfs and extrasolar gas giants is growing rapidly. Many brown dwarfs and extrasolar gas giants exhibit spectroscopic and photometric variability, which is likely the result of weather patterns. However, for the foreseeable future, point-source observations will be the only viable method to extract brown dwarf and exoplanet spectra. Models have been able to reproduce the observed variability, but ground truth observations are required to verify their results. To that end, we provide visual and near-infrared spect…
We report the detection of a Jupiter-mass planet discovered with the SOPHIE spectrograph mounted on the 1.93-m telescope at the Haute-Provence Observatory. The new planet orbits HD109246, a G0V star slightly more metallic than the Sun. HD109246b has a minimum mass of 0.77 MJup, an orbital period of 68 days, and an eccentricity of 0.12. It is placed in a sparsely populated region of the period distribution of extrasolar planets. We also present a correction method for the so-called seeing effect that affects the SOPHIE radial velocities. We complement this discovery announcement with a descript…
Wasp-10b is a very interesting transiting extrasolar planet. Although its transit is very deep, about 40 mmag, there are very different estimates of its radius in the literature. We present new photometric observations of four complete transits of this planet. The whole event was detected for each transit and the final light curve consists of more than 1500 individual CCD exposures. We determine the following system parameters: planet to star radius ratio R_p/R_star=0.168 +- 0.001, star radius to semimajor axis ratio R_star/a = 0.094 +- 0.001 and inclination i=87.3 +- 0.1 deg. Assuming that th…
The magnetization of solar and extrasolar gas giants is critically dependent on electronic and mass transport coefficients of their convective fluid interiors. We analyze recent laboratory experimental results on metallic hydrogen to derive a new conductivity profile for the Jovian-like planets. We combine this revised conductivity with a polytropic-based thermodynamic equation of state to study the dynamo action in 100 extrasolar giant planets varying from synchronous hot jupiters to fast rotators, with masses ranging from 0.3MJ to 15MJ. We find conducting cores larger than previous estimates…
Continuing work initiated in an earlier publication [Sato and Asada, PASJ, 61, L29 (2009)], we consider light curves influenced by the orbital inclination and eccentricity of a companion in orbit around a transiting extrasolar planet (in a planet-satellite system or a hypothetical true binary). We show that the semimajor axis, eccentricity and inclination angle of a `moon' orbit around the host planet can be determined by transit method alone. For this purpose, we present a formulation for the parameter determinations in a small-eccentricity approximation as well as in the exact form. As a res…
We report the measurement of a spin-orbit misalignment for WASP-79b, a recently discovered, bloated transiting hot Jupiter from the WASP survey. Data were obtained using the CYCLOPS2 optical-fiber bundle and its simultaneous calibration system feeding the UCLES spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope. We have used the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect to determine the sky-projected spin-orbit angle to be lambda = -106+19-13 degrees. This result indicates a significant misalignment between the spin axis of the host star and the orbital plane of the planet -- the planet being in a nearly polar o…
We explore the dynamics of magnetically controlled outflows from Hot Jupiters, where these flows are driven by UV heating from the central star. In these systems, some of the open field lines do not allow the flow to pass smoothly through the sonic point, so that steady-state solutions do not exist in general. This paper focuses on this type of magnetic field configuration, where the resulting flow becomes manifestly time-dependent. We consider the case of both steady heating and time-variable heating, and find the time scales for the corresponding time variations of the outflow. Because the f…
We have investigated the dependence of the prograde/retrograde temporary capture of asteroids by a planet on their original heliocentric semimajor axes through analytical arguments and numerical orbital integrations in order to discuss the origins of irregular satellites of giant planets. We found that capture is mostly retrograde for the asteroids near the planetary orbit and is prograde for those from further orbits. An analytical investigation reveals the intrinsic dynamics of these dependences and gives boundary semimajor axes for the change in prograde/retrograde capture. The numerical ca…
Searches for stellar companions to hot Jupiters (HJs) have revealed that planetary systems hosting a HJ are approximately three times more likely to have a stellar companion with a semimajor axis between 50 and 2000 AU, compared to field stars. This correlation suggests that HJ formation is affected by the stellar binary companion. A potential model is high-eccentricity migration, in which the binary companion induces high-eccentricity Lidov-Kozai (LK) oscillations in the proto-HJ orbit, triggering orbital migration driven by tides. A pitfall of this `binary-LK' model is that the observed stel…
Magnetic stellar activity of exoplanet hosts can lead to the production of large amounts of high-energy emission, which irradiates extrasolar planets, located in the immediate vicinity of such stars. This radiation is absorbed in the planets' upper atmospheres, which consequently heat up and evaporate, possibly leading to an irradiation-induced mass-loss. We present a study of the high-energy emission in the four magnetically active planet-bearing host stars Kepler-63, Kepler-210, WASP-19, and HAT-P-11, based on new XMM-Newton observations. We find that the X-ray luminosities of these stars ar…
Distinguishing classes within substellar objects and understanding their formation and evolution need larger samples of substellar companions such as exoplanets, brown dwarfs, and low-mass stars. In this paper, we look for substellar companions using radial velocity surveys of FGK stars with the SOPHIE spectrograph at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence. We assign here the radial velocity variations of 27 stars to their orbital motion induced by low-mass companions. We also constrained their plane-of-the-sky motion using HIPPARCOS and Gaia Data Release 1 measurements, which constrain the true m…
This article presents a review on the observations and theoretical modeling of the evaporation of extrasolar planets. The observations and the resulting constraints on the upper atmosphere (thermosphere and exosphere) of the "hot-Jupiters". are described. The early observations of the first discovered transiting extrasolar planet, HD209458b, allowed the discovery that this planet has an extended atmosphere of escaping hydrogen. Subsequent observations showed the presence of oxygen and carbon at very high altitude. These observations give unique constraints on the escape rate and mechanism in t…
We present radial-velocity measurements obtained in a programs underway to search for extrasolar planets with the spectrograph SOPHIE at the 1.93-m telescope of the Haute-Provence Observatory. Targets were selected from catalogs observed with ELODIE, mounted previously at the telescope, in order to detect long-period planets with an extended database close to 15 years. Two new Jupiter-analog candidates are reported to orbit the bright stars HD150706 and HD222155 in 16.1 and 10.9 yr at 6.7 (+4.0,-1.4) and 5.1(+0.6,-0.7) AU and to have minimum masses of 2.71 (+1.44,-0.66) and 1.90 (+0.67,-0.53) …
The molecular ion H$_3^+$ is a potentially powerful tracer of the ionospheres and thermal structures of Jovian planets, but has never been detected in a planetary mass object outside of the solar system. Models predict that H$_3^+$ emission driven by EUV flux and solar wind on hot Jupiters, or by powerful aurorae on brown dwarfs, will be between $10^2$ and $10^5\times$ more intense than that of Jupiter. If optimal conditions for the production of emission do exist, the emission may be detectable by current ground-based instruments or in the near future. We present the first search for H$_3^+$ …
Jupiter's radio emission has been linked to its planetary-scale magnetic field, and spacecraft investigations have revealed that most planets, and some moons, have or had a global magnetic field. Generated by internal dynamos, magnetic fields are one of the few remote sensing means of constraining the properties of planetary interiors. For the Earth, its magnetic field has been speculated to be partially responsible for its habitability, and knowledge of an extrasolar planet's magnetic field may be necessary to assess its habitability. The radio emission from Jupiter and other solar system pla…
The findings of more than 350 extrasolar planets, most of them nontransiting Hot Jupiters, have revealed correlations between the metallicity of the main-sequence (MS) host stars and planetary incidence. This connection can be used to calculate the planet formation probability around other stars, not yet known to have planetary companions. We locate the promising spots for current transit surveys on the celestial plane and strive for absolute values of the expected number of transits in general. We used data of the Tycho catalog for about 1 million objects to locate all the stars with 0m < m_V…
We study the dynamics of planetary systems with two planets moving in the same plane, when frictional forces act on the two planets, in addition to the gravitational forces. The model of the general three-body problem is used. Different laws of friction are considered. The topology of the phase space is essential in understanding the evolution of the system. The topology is determined by the families of stable and unstable periodic orbits, both symmetric and non symmetric. It is along the stable families, or close to them, that the planets migrate when dissipative forces act. At the critical p…
The extrasolar planetary system around HR 8799 is the first multiplanet system ever imaged. It is also, by a wide margin, the highest mass system with >27 Jupiters of planetary mass past 25 AU. This is a remarkable system with no analogue with any other known planetary system. In the first part of this paper we investigate the nature of two faint objects imaged near the system. These objects are considerably fainter (H=20.4, and 21.6 mag) and more distant (projected separations of 612, and 534 AU) than the three known planetary companions b, c, and d (68-24 AU). It is possible that these two o…
It has been observed that hot Jupiters located within 0.08 AU of their host stars commonly display radii in excess of those expected based on models. A number of theoretical explanations for this phenomenon have been suggested, but the ability of any one mechanism to account for the full range of observations remains to be rigorously proven. I identify an additional heating mechanism, arising from the interaction of the interplanetary magnetic field and the planetary magnetosphere, and show that this is capable of providing enough energy to explain the observed planetary radii. Such a model pr…
We present high-precision radial-velocity measurements of three solar-type stars: HD 13908, HD 159243, and HIP 91258. The observations were made with the SOPHIE spectrograph at the 1.93-m telescope of Observatoire de Haute-Provence (France). They show that these three bright stars host exoplanetary systems composed of at least two companions. HD 13908 b is a planet with a minimum mass of 0.865+-0.035 Mjup, on a circular orbit with a period of 19.382+-0.006 days. There is an outer massive companion in the system with a period of 931+-17 days, e = 0.12+-0.02, and a minimum mass of 5.13+-0.25 Mju…
We analytically and numerically investigate the long-term, i.e. averaged over one full revolution, orbital effects of the non-isotropic percent mass loss \dot m/m experienced by several transiting hot Jupiters whose atmospheres are hit by severe radiations flows coming from their close parent stars. The semi-major axis a, the argument of pericenter ωand the mean anomaly M experience net variations, while the eccentricity e, the inclination I and the longitude of the ascending node remain unchanged, on average. In particular, a increases independently of e and of the speed Vesc of the ejected m…
Close-in gas giants are expected to have a strong magnetic field of $\sim 10-100$G. Magnetic fields in extrasolar giant planets are detectable by future radio observations in $\gtrsim 10$MHz and the spectropolarimetry of atomic lines. In contrast, the elusive interiors of exoplanets remain largely unknown. Here we consider the possibility of inferring the existence of the innermost cores of extrasolar giant planets through the detection of planetary magnetic fields. We simulated the long-term thermal evolution of close-in giant planets with masses of $0.2-10M_\mathrm{Jup}$ to estimate their ma…
Hot Jupiters (HJs) are giant planets with orbital periods of the order of a few days with semimajor axis within $\sim$0.1 au. Several theories have been invoked in order to explain the origin of this type of planets, one of them being the high-eccentricity migration. This migration can occur through different high-eccentricity mechanisms. Our investigation focused on six different kinds of high-eccentricity mechanisms, namely, direct dispersion, coplanar, Kozai-Lidov, secular chaos, E1 and E2 mechanisms. We investigated the efficiency of these mechanisms for the production of HJ candidates in …
The potential existence of a distant planet ("Planet Nine") in the Solar system has prompted a re-think about the evolution of planetary systems. As the Sun transitions from a main sequence star into a white dwarf, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are currently assumed to survive in expanded but otherwise unchanged orbits. However, a sufficiently-distant and sufficiently-massive extra planet would alter this quiescent end scenario through the combined effects of Solar giant branch mass loss and Galactic tides. Here, I estimate bounds for the mass and orbit of a distant extra planet that wou…
Exoplanets show a pile-up of Jupiter-size planets in orbits with a 3-day period. A fraction of these hot Jupiters have retrograde orbits with respect to the parent star's rotation. To explain these observations we performed a series of numerical integrations of planet scattering followed by the tidal circularization. We considered planetary systems having 3 and 4 planets initially. We found that the standard Kozai migration is an inefficient mechanism for the formation of hot Jupiters. Our results show the formation of two distinct populations of hot Jupiters. The inner population of hot Jupit…
The Sun will eventually lose about half of its current mass nonlinearly over several phases of post-main sequence evolution. This mass loss will cause any surviving orbiting body to increase its semimajor axis and perhaps vary its eccentricity. Here, we use a range of Solar models spanning plausible evolutionary sequences and assume isotropic mass loss to assess the possibility of escape from the Solar System. We find that the critical semimajor axis in the Solar System within which an orbiting body is guaranteed to remain bound to the dying Sun due to perturbations from stellar mass loss alon…
We present a new, magnetohydrodynamic mechanism for inflation of close-in giant extrasolar planets. The idea behind the mechanism is that current, which is induced through interaction of atmospheric winds and the planetary magnetic field, results in significant Ohmic dissipation of energy in the interior. We develop an analytical model for computation of interior Ohmic dissipation, with a simplified treatment of the atmosphere. We apply our model to HD209458b, Tres-4b and HD189733b. With conservative assumptions for wind speed and field strength, our model predicts a generated power that appea…
We present here observational evidence that the snowline plays a significant role in the formation and evolution of gas giant planets. When considering the population of observed exoplanets, we find a boundary in mass-semimajor axis space that suggests planets are preferentially found beyond the snowline prior to undergoing gap-opening inward migration and associated gas accretion. This is consistent with theoretical models suggesting that sudden changes in opacity -- as would occur at the snowline -- can influence core migration. Furthermore, population synthesis modelling suggests that this …
Context. Due to their low transit probability, the long-period planets are, as a population, only partially probed by transit surveys. Radial velocity surveys thus have a key role to play, in particular for giant planets. Cold Jupiters induce a typical radial velocity semi-amplitude of 10m.s^{-1}, which is well within the reach of multiple instruments that have now been in operation for more than a decade. Aims. We take advantage of the ongoing radial velocity survey with the sophie high-resolution spectrograph, which continues the search started by its predecessor elodie to further characteri…
Electric discharges were detected directly in the cloudy atmospheres of Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, are debatable for Venus, and indirectly inferred for Neptune and Uranus in our solar system. Sprites (and other types of transient luminous events) have been detected only on Earth, and are theoretically predicted for Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. Cloud formation is a common phenomenon in ultra-cool atmospheres such as in Brown Dwarf and extrasolar planetary atmospheres. Cloud particles can be expected to carry considerable charges which may trigger discharge events via small-scale processes between…
We investigate a population of transiting planets that receive relatively modest stellar insolation, indicating equilibrium temperatures $< 1000$ K, and for which the heating mechanism that inflates hot Jupiters does not appear to be significantly active. We use structural evolution models to infer the amount of heavy elements within each of these planets. There is a correlation between the stellar metallicity and the mass of heavy elements in its transiting planet(s). It appears that all giant planets posses a minimum of $\sim$ 10-15 Earth masses of heavy elements, with planets around metal-r…
The recently discovered brown dwarf WISE 0855 presents our first opportunity to directly study an object outside the Solar System that is nearly as cold as our own gas giant planets. However the traditional methodology for characterizing brown dwarfs---near infrared spectroscopy---is not currently feasible as WISE 0855 is too cold and faint. To characterize this frozen extrasolar world we obtained a 4.5-5.2 $μ$m spectrum, the same bandpass long used to study Jupiter's deep thermal emission. Our spectrum reveals the presence of atmospheric water vapor and clouds, with an absorption profile that…
With about 700 confirmed extrasolar planets, it is time to move beyond discovery and towards characterization. Perhaps the most basic parameter of an extrasolar planet is its mass; however, this is very difficult to determine if the planet does not transit the star. The radial velocity technique, still the most fruitful method of discovering planets in the solar neighborhood, can only determine a minimum planet mass. We investigate a method using the near-future IGRINS near infrared spectrograph to detect the orbital motion of the planet itself. We simulate several observations of a star with …
In recent years it has been shown that the tidal coupling between extrasolar planets and their stars could be an important mechanism leading to orbital evolution. Both the tides the planet raises on the star and vice versa are important and dissipation efficiencies ranging over four orders of magnitude are being used. In addition, the discovery of extrasolar planets extremely close to their stars has made it clear that the estimates of the tidal quality factor, Q, of the stars based on Jupiter and its satellite system and on main sequence binary star observations are too low, resulting in life…
Motivated by the trends found in the observed sample of extrasolar planets, this paper determines tidal equilibrium states for forming planetary systems --- subject to conservation of angular momentum, constant total mass, and fixed orbital spacing. In the low-mass limit, valid for superearth-class planets with masses of order $m_{\rm p}\sim10M_\oplus$, previous work showed that energy optimization leads to nearly equal mass planets, with circular orbits confined to a plane. The present treatment generalizes previous results by including the self-gravity of the planetary bodies. For systems wi…
This is the second paper in a series of papers showing the results of extrasolar planet population synthesis calculations. In the companion paper (Paper I), we have presented in detail our methods. By applying an observational detection bias for radial velocity surveys, we identify the potentially detectable synthetic planets. The properties of these planets are compared in quantitative statistical tests with the properties of a carefully selected sub-population of actual exoplanets. We use a two dimensional Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to compare the mass-distance distributions of synthetic and ob…
Observational surveys for extrasolar planets probe the diverse outcomes of planet formation and evolution. These surveys measure the frequency of planets with different masses, sizes, orbital characteristics, and host star properties. Small planets between the sizes of Earth and Neptune substantially outnumber Jupiter-sized planets. The survey measurements support the core accretion model in which planets form by the accumulation of solids and then gas in protoplanetary disks. The diversity of exoplanetary characteristics demonstrates that most of the gross features of the Solar system are one…
In this paper we present three new extrasolar planets from the Qatar Exoplanet Survey (QES). Qatar-8b is a hot Saturn, with Mpl = 0.37 Mjup and Rpl = 1.3 Rjup, orbiting a solar-like star every Porb = 3.7 days. Qatar-9b is a hot Jupiter with a mass of Mpl = 1.2 Mjup and a radius of Rpl = 1 Rjup, in a Porb = 1.5 days orbit around a low mass, Mstar = 0.7 Msun, mid-K main-sequence star. Finally, Qatar-10b is a hot, Teq ~ 2000 K, sub-Jupiter mass planet, Mpl = 0.7 Mjup, with a radius of Rpl = 1.54 Rjup and an orbital period of Porb = 1.6 days, placing it on the edge of the sub-Jupiter desert.
The recent discovery of a three-planet extrasolar system of HR 8799 by Marois et al. is a breakthrough in the field of the direct imaging. This great achievement raises questions on the formation and dynamical stability of the HR 8799 system, because Keplerian fits to astrometric data are strongly unstable during ~0.2Myr. We search for stable, self-consistent N-body orbits with the so called GAMP method that incorporates stability constraints into the optimization algorithm. Our searches reveal only small regions of stable motions in the phase space of three-planet, coplanar configurations. Mo…
Polarimetry of extrasolar planets becomes a new tool for their investigation, which requires the development of diagnostic techniques and parameter case studies. Our goal is to develop a theoretical model which can be applied to interpret polarimetric observations of extrasolar planets. Here we present a theoretical parameter study that shows the influence of the various involved parameters on the polarization curves. Furthermore, we investigate the robustness of the fitting procedure. We employ the physics of Rayleigh scattering to obtain polarization curves of an unresolved extrasolar planet…
We present the direct imaging discovery of an extrasolar planet, or possible low-mass brown dwarf, at a projected separation of 55 +/- 2 AU (1.058 +/- 0.007 arcsec) from the B9-type star Kappa And. The planet was detected with Subaru/HiCIAO during the SEEDS survey, and confirmed as a bound companion via common proper motion measurements. Observed near-infrared magnitudes of J = 16.3 +/- 0.3, H = 15.2 +/- 0.2, Ks = 14.6 +/- 0.4, and L' = 13.12 +/- 0.09 indicate a temperature of ~1700 K. The galactic kinematics of the host star are consistent with membership in the Columba association, implying …
Hot Jupiters are giant planets on orbits a few hundredths of an AU. They do not share their system with low-mass close-in planets, despite these latter being exceedingly common. Two migration channels for hot Jupiters have been proposed: through a protoplanetary gas disc or by tidal circularisation of highly-eccentric planets. We show that highly-eccentric giant planets that will become hot Jupiters clear out any low-mass inner planets in the system, explaining the observed lack of such companions to hot Jupiters. A less common outcome of the interaction is that the giant planet is ejected by …
In this paper we report spectroscopy of the transiting hot Jupiter HAT-P-1b. The HAT-P-1b is a giant ($R = 1.2 RJ$), low-mean density transiting extrasolar planet in a visual binary system, composed of two sun-like stars. The host star HAT-P-1b known as ADS 16402 B is a G0V C dwarf (V = 9.87). We revealed optical emission of $C_{2}$, $CN$ and $CH$ radicals in the spectrum of the hot Jupiter HAT-P-1b. We discovered radial pulsation of the hot Jupiter HAT-P-1b with a period of about 1900 sec.
The formation and dynamical history of hot Jupiters is currently debated, with wide stellar binaries having been suggested as a potential formation pathway. Additionally, contaminating light from both binary companions and unassociated stars can significantly bias the results of planet characterisation studies, but can be corrected for if the properties of the contaminating star are known. We search for binary companions to known transiting exoplanet host stars, in order to determine the multiplicity properties of hot Jupiter host stars. We also characterise unassociated stars along the line o…
We report the discovery of two giant planets orbiting the K giant HD 33844 based on radial velocity data from three independent campaigns. The planets move on nearly circular orbits with semimajor axes $a_b=1.60\pm$0.02 AU and $a_c=2.24\pm$0.05 AU, and have minimum masses (m sin $i$) of $M_b=1.96\pm$0.12 Mjup and $M_c=1.76\pm$0.18 Mjup. Detailed N-body dynamical simulations show that the two planets remain on stable orbits for more than $10^6$ years for low eccentricities, and are most likely trapped in a mutual 3:5 mean-motion resonance.
There are two planetary formation scenarios: core accretion and gravitational disk instability. Based on the fact that gaseous objects are preferentially observed around metal-rich host stars, most extra-solar gaseous objects discovered to date are thought to have been formed by core accretion. Here, we present 569 samples of gaseous planets and brown dwarfs found in 485 planetary systems that span three mass regimes with boundary values at 4 and 25 Jupiter-mass masses through performing cluster analyses of these samples regarding the host-star metallicity, after minimizing the impact of the s…
Planet-Planet Scattering Explains the Mass-Eccentricity Relation of Warm Jupiters
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）；National Center for Supercomputing Applications（国家超级计算应用中心）；University of California, San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校）；National Astronomical Observatory of Japan（日本国立天文台）；University of California, Santa Cruz（加州大学圣克鲁兹分校）；U.S. National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory（美国国家科学基金会国家光学-红外天文研究实验室）
The hot Jupiter WASP-12b is one of the largest, hottest, and best-studied extrasolar planets. We revisit our recent analysis of WASP-12b's emission spectrum in light of near-infrared spectroscopic measurements which have been claimed to support either a hydride-dominated or carbon-rich atmospheric composition. We show that this new spectrum is still consistent with a featureless blackbody, indicating a nearly isothermal photosphere on the planet's day side. Thus the ensemble of occultation measurements for WASP-12b is still insufficient to constrain the planet's atmospheric composition.
Through the process of thermal ionization, intense stellar irradiation renders Hot Jupiter atmospheres electrically conductive. Simultaneously, lateral variability in the irradiation drives the global circulation with peak wind speeds of order ~ km/s. In turn, the interactions between the atmospheric flows and the background magnetic field give rise to Lorentz forces that can act to perturb the flow away from its purely hydrodynamical counterpart. Using analytical theory and numerical simulations, here we show that significant deviations away from axisymmetric circulation are unstable in prese…
In the inner solar system, the planets' orbits evolve chaotically, driven primarily by secular chaos. Mercury has a particularly chaotic orbit, and is in danger of being lost within a few billion years. Just as secular chaos is reorganizing the solar system today, so it has likely helped organize it in the past. We suggest that extrasolar planetary systems are also organized to a large extent by secular chaos. A hot Jupiter could be the end state of a secularly chaotic planetary system reminiscent of the solar system. But in the case of the hot Jupiter, the innermost planet was Jupiter- (rathe…
We present and analyze a new M' detection of the young exoplanet beta Pictoris b from 2008 VLT/NaCo data at a separation of ~ 4 AU and a high signal-to-noise rereduction of L' data taken in December 2009. Based on our orbital analysis, the planet's orbit is viewed almost perfectly edge-on (i ~ 89 degrees) and has a Saturn-like semimajor axis of 9.50 (+3.93, -1.7) AU. Intriguingly, the planet's orbit is aligned with the major axis of the outer disk (Omega ~ 31 degrees) but probably misaligned with the warp/inclined disk at 80 AU often cited as a signpost for the planet's existence. Our results …
Context: It has been speculated for many years that some extrasolar planets may emit strong cyclotron emission at low radio frequencies in the range 10-100 MHz. Despite several attempts no such emission has yet been seen. Aims: The hot Jupiter system tau Bootis is one of the nearest (d=15 pc) exoplanets known to date. The gravitational influence of this massive hot Jupiter (M=6 M_jup) has locked the star-planet system, making the star rotate in P~3.3 days, similar to the orbital period of the planet. From the well established correlation between stellar rotation and radio luminosity, it is con…
Close-in extrasolar gas giants -- the hot Jupiters -- display departures in radius above the zero-temperature solution, the radius excess, that are anomalously high. The radius excess of hot Jupiters follows a relatively close relation with thermal tidal tidal torques and holds for ~ 4-5 orders of magnitude in a characteristic thermal tidal power in such a way that is consistent with basic theoretical expectations. The relation suggests that thermal tidal torques determine the global thermodynamic and spin state of the hot Jupiters. On empirical grounds, it is shown that theories of hot Jupite…
We review the interior structure and evolution of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and extrasolar giant planets with particular emphasis on constraining their global composition.
