The radius distribution of small, close-in exoplanets has recently been shown to be bimodal. The photoevaporation model predicted this bimodality. In the photoevaporation scenario, some planets are completely stripped of their primordial H/He atmospheres, whereas others retain them. Comparisons between the photoevaporation model and observed planetary populations have the power to unveil details of the planet population inaccessible by standard observations, such as the core mass distribution and core composition. In this work, we present a hierarchical inference analysis on the distribution of close-in exoplanets using forward-models of photoevaporation evolution. We use this model to constrain the planetary distributions for core composition, core mass and initial atmospheric mass fraction. We find that the core-mass distribution is peaked, with a peak-mass of $\sim 4$M$_\oplus$. The bulk core-composition is consistent with a rock/iron mixture that is ice-poor and ``Earth-like''; the spread in core-composition is found to be narrow ($\lesssim 16\%$ variation in iron-mass fraction at the 2$σ$ level) and consistent with zero. This result favours core formation in a water/ice poor environment. We find the majority of planets accreted a H/He envelope with a typical mass fraction of $\sim 4\%$; only a small fraction did not accrete large amounts of H/He and were ``born-rocky''. We find four-times as many super-Earths were formed through photoevaporation, as formed without a large H/He atmosphere. Finally, we find core-accretion theory over-predicts the amount of H/He cores would have accreted by a factor of $\sim 5$, pointing to additional mass-loss mechanisms (e.g. ``boil-off'') or modifications to core-accretion theory.
The CO-Fuelled Time Machine: Tracing Birth Conditions and Terrestrial Planet Formation Outcomes in HD 163296 through Pebble Drift-induced CO Enhancements
The Kepler mission has discovered about a dozen circumbinary planetary systems, all containing planets on ~ 1 AU orbits. We place bounds on the locations in the circumbinary protoplanetary disk, where these planets could have formed through collisional agglomeration starting from small (km-sized or less) planetesimals. We first present a model of secular planetesimal dynamics that accounts for the (1) perturbation due to the eccentric precessing binary, as well as the (2) gravity and (3) gas drag from a precessing eccentric disk. Their simultaneous action leads to rich dynamics, with (multiple…
The recent discovery and initial characterization of sub-Neptune-sized exoplanets that receive stellar irradiance of approximately Earth's raised the prospect of finding habitable planets in the coming decade, because some of these temperate planets may support liquid water oceans if they do not have massive H2/He envelopes and are thus not too hot at the bottom of the envelopes. For planets larger than Earth, and especially planets in the 1.7-3.5 R_Earth population, the mass of the H2/He envelope is typically not sufficiently constrained to assess the potential habitability. Here we show that…
We present the highest resolution study to date of super-Earths migrating in inviscid and low-viscosity discs, motivated by the connection to laminar, wind-driven models of protoplanetary discs. Our models unveil the critical role of vortices in determining the migration behaviour for partial gap-opening planets. Vortices form in pressure maxima at gap edges, and prevent the disc-feedback stopping of migration for intermediate planets in low-viscosity and inviscid discs, contrary to the concept of the `inertial limit' or `disc feedback' halting predicted from analytical models. Vortices may al…
A Dichotomy of the Mass-Metallicity Relation of Exoplanetary Atmospheres Demarcated by their Birthplace
Division of Science, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(日本国立天文台科学部);Graduate Institute for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI(综合研究大学院大学);Astrobiology Center(天体生物学中心);Department of Earth and Planetary Science, The University of Tokyo(东京大学地球行星科学系);Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Institute of Science Tokyo(东京科学大学地球行星科学系);UTokyo Organization for Planetary Space Science (UTOPS), University of Tokyo(东京大学宇宙行星科学研究组织);Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen(格罗宁根大学卡普坦天文研究所)
Previous investigations have revealed that eccentric super-Earths represent a class of planets which are particularly effective at transporting minor bodies towards white dwarfs and subsequently polluting their atmospheres with observable chemical signatures. However, the lack of discoveries of these planets beyond a few astronomical units from their host stars prompts a better understanding of their orbital architectures from their nascent birth cluster. Here, we perform stellar cluster simulations of 3-planet and 7-planet systems containing super-Earths on initially circular, coplanar orbits…
Host--Non-host Differences in Stellar Chemistry, Activity, and Birth Radius: Hints of Distinct Formation Environments for Earth-like Planets and Sub-Neptunes
School of Science, Hangzhou Dianzi University(杭州电子科技大学理学院);National Astronomical Data Center Zhijiang Branch(国家天文台数据科学中心(紫金山));CAS Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院国家天文台光学天文重点实验室);Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University(俄亥俄州立大学天文学系);Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (CCAPP), The Ohio State University(俄亥俄州立大学宇宙学与高能物理中心);Department of Physics, Xiangtan University(湘潭大学物理系);School of Physics and Astronomy, Beijing Normal University(北京师范大学物理与天文学院)
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile(智利天主教 Pontificia 大学);Universidad de Alcalá(阿尔卡拉大学);Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) CSIC-INTA(天体生物学中心(CAB)西班牙高等科学研究理事会-国家航空航天技术研究所);Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences(波兰科学院尼古拉·哥白尼天文台)
The birth and death of planets may be affected by mass outflows from their parent stars during the T-Tauri or post-main-sequence phases of stellar evolution. These outflows are often modelled to be isotropic, but this assumption is not realistic for fast rotators, bipolar jets and supernovae. Here we derive the general equations of motion for the time evolution of a single planet, brown dwarf, comet or asteroid perturbed by anisotropic mass loss in terms of a complete set of planetary orbital elements, the ejecta velocity, and the parent star's co-latitude and longitude. We restrict our applic…
The inclination distribution of circumbinary planets (CBPs) is an important scientific issue. It is of great significance in estimating the occurrence rate of CBPs and studying their formation and evolution. Although the CBPs currently discovered by the transit method are nearly coplanar, the true inclination distribution of CBPs is still unknown. Previous researches on CBPs mostly regarded them as an isolated binary-planet system, without considering the birth environment of their host binaries. It is generally believed that almost all stars are born in clusters. Therefore, it is necessary to…
Bridging stellar evolution and planet formation: from birth, to survivors of the fittest, to the second generation of planets
European Southern Observatory(欧洲南方天文台);KU Leuven(荷语鲁汶大学);Chalmers University of Technology(查尔姆斯理工大学);Macquarie University(麦考瑞大学);Georgia State University(佐治亚州立大学);University of Exeter(埃克塞特大学);Konkoly Observatory(孔科利天文台);Côte d’Azur Observatory(蔚蓝海岸天文台);Universidad de Chile(智利大学)
Insights into the Exoplanet Radius Valley from Host-Star Ages, Activity, Chemistry, and Birth Radius
School of Science, Hangzhou Dianzi University(杭州电子科技大学理学院);National Astronomical Data Center Zhijiang Branch(国家天文台紫江分中心);CAS Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院国家天文台光学天文重点实验室);Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University(俄亥俄州立大学天文学系);Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (CCAPP), The Ohio State University(俄亥俄州立大学宇宙学与高能粒子物理中心);School of Physics and Astronomy, Beijing Normal University(北京师范大学物理与天文学院);School of Science, Xichang University(西昌学院理学院)
Star and planet formation are inextricably linked. In the earliest phases of the collapse of a protostar a disc forms around the young star and such discs are observed for the first several million years of a star's life. It is within these circumstellar, or protoplanetary, discs that the first stages of planet formation occur. Recent observations from ALMA suggest that planet formation may already be well under way after only 1 Myr of a star's life. However, stars do not form in isolation; they form from the collapse and fragmentation of giant molecular clouds several parsecs in size. This re…
Unveiling What Makes Saturn Ring: Quantifying the Amplitudes of Saturn's Planetary Normal-Mode Oscillations and Trends in C-Ring Properties Using Kronoseismology (VII)
Probing the origins. III. Exoplanet demographics across Galactic birth radii
Universidad de Alcalá(阿尔卡拉大学);Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile(智利天主教 Pontificia 大学);Instituto de Astrofísica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile(智利天主教 Pontificia 大学天体物理研究所);Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) CSIC-INTA(CSIC-INTA 天体生物学中心);European Space Agency (ESA), European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC)(欧洲空间局(ESA)欧洲空间天文中心);Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences(波兰科学院尼古拉·哥白尼天文中心)
Exploring the Sun's birth radius and the distribution of planet building blocks in the Milky Way galaxy: A multi-zone Galactic chemical evolution approach
In this third paper of the MOVES (Multiwavelength Observations of an eVaporating Exoplanet and its Star) programme, we combine Hubble Space Telescope far-ultraviolet observations with XMM-Newton/Swift X-ray observations to measure the emission of HD 189733 in various FUV lines, and its soft X-ray spectrum. Based on these measurements we characterise the interstellar medium toward HD 189733 and derive semi-synthetic XUV spectra of the star, which are used to study the evolution of its high-energy emission at five different epochs. Two flares from HD 189733 are observed, but we propose that the …
Unveiling Complex Chemistry in Planet-forming Disks with the SKAO
University of Leeds(利兹大学);Univ Toulouse, CNES, CNRS, IRAP(图卢兹大学,法国国家空间研究中心,法国国家科学研究中心,天体物理研究所);Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics(中央研究院天文及天文物理研究所);Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology(加州理工学院喷气推进实验室);Tata Institute of Fundamental Research(塔塔基础研究所);Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences(伊朗基础科学研究院);United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre(英国天文学技术研究中心);National Institute of Science Education and Research(国家科学教育与研究学院);Homi Bhabha National Institute(霍米·巴哈国立学院);Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen(哥本哈根大学尼尔斯·玻尔研究所);Monash University(蒙纳士大学);Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院上海天文台);University of Leicester(莱斯特大学)
In the course of the selection of the scientific themes for the second and third L-class missions of the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program of the European Space Agency, the exploration of the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune was defined "a timely milestone, fully appropriate for an L class mission". Among the proposed scientific themes, we presented the scientific case of exploring both planets and their satellites in the framework of a single L-class mission and proposed a mission scenario that could allow to achieve this result. In this work we present an updated and more complete discussi…
The Birth of Minor-Body Populations in the $β$ Pictoris System I: The First 25 Myr
Universidad de La Laguna (ULL)(拉古纳大学);Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC-INTA(天体生物学中心(CAB),CSIC-INTA);Universidad Complutense de Madrid(马德里康普顿斯大学);Lund University(隆德大学)
Millimeter astronomy provides valuable information on the birthplaces of planetary systems. In order to compare theoretical models with observations, the dust component has to be carefully calculated. Here, we aim to study the effects of dust entrainment in photoevaporative winds and the ejection and drag of dust due to effects caused by radiation from the central star. We improved and extended the existing implementation of a two-population dust and pebble description in the global Bern/Heidelberg planet formation and evolution model. Modern prescriptions for photoevaporative winds were used …
Transit surveys combined with Doppler data have revealed a class of gas giant planets that are massive and highly enriched in heavy elements (e.g., HD149026b, GJ436b, and HAT-P-20b). It is tempting to consider these planets as validation of core accretion plus gas capture because it is often assumed that disk instability planets should be of nebular composition. We show in this paper, to the contrary, that gas giants that form by disk instability can have a variety of heavy element compositions, ranging from sub- to super-nebular values. High levels of enrichment can be achieved through one or…
Active Galactic Nucleus Tori: Potential Birthplace to Millions of Planets
Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences(波兰科学院尼古拉·哥白尼天文学中心);New Mexico State University(新墨西哥州立大学);CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College(纽约市立大学曼哈顿社区学院);American Museum of Natural History(美国自然历史博物馆)
The gaseous mass of protoplanetary disks is a fundamental quantity in planet formation. The presence of gas is necessary to assemble planetesimals, it determines timescales of giant planet birth, and it is an unknown factor for a wide range of properties of planet formation, from chemical abundances (X/H) to the mass efficiency of planet formation. The gas mass obtained from traditional tracers, such as dust thermal continuum and CO isotopologues, are now known to have significant (1 - 2 orders of magnitude) discrepancies. Emission from the isotopologue of H2, hydrogen deuteride (HD), offers a…
The solid accretion rate, necessary to grow gas giant planetary cores within the disk lifetime, has been a major constraint for theories of planet formation. We tested the solid accretion rate efficiency on planetary cores of different masses embedded in their birth disk, by means of 3D radiation-hydrodynamics, where we followed the evolution of a swarm of embedded solids of different sizes. We found that using a realistic equation of state and radiative cooling, the disk at 5 au is able to cool efficiently and reduce its aspect ratio. As a result, the pebble isolation mass is reached before t…
We propose a pebble-driven planet formation scenario to form giant planets with high multiplicity and large orbital distances in the early gas disk phase. We perform N-body simulations to investigate the growth and migration of low-mass protoplanets in the disk with inner viscously heated and outer stellar irradiated regions. The key feature of this model is that the giant planet cores grow rapidly by a combination of pebble accretion and planet-planet collisions. This consequently speeds up their gas accretion. Because of efficient growth, the planet transitions from rapid type I migration to…
Protoplanetary disks around young stars are the birth sights of planetary systems like our own. Disks represent the gaseous dusty matter left after the formation of their central stars. The mass and luminosity of the star, initial disk mass and angular momentum, and gas viscosity govern disk evolution and accretion. Protoplanetary disks are the cosmic nurseries where microscopic dust grains grow into pebbles, planetesimals, and planets.
The discovery of planetary systems outside of the solar system has challenged some of the tenets of planetary formation. Among the difficult-to-explain observations, are systems with a giant planet orbiting a very-low mass star, such as the recently discovered GJ~3512b planetary system, where a Jupiter-like planet orbits an $M$-star in a tight and eccentric orbit. Systems such as this one are not predicted by the core accretion theory of planet formation. Here we suggest a novel mechanism, in which the giant planet is born around a more typical Sun-like star ($M_{*,1}$), but is subsequently ex…
The ongoing discoveries of extrasolar planets are unveiling a wide range of terrestrial mass (size) planets around their host stars. In this letter, we present estimates of habitable zones (HZs) around stars with stellar effective temperatures in the range 2600 K - 7200 K, for planetary masses between 0.1 ME and 5 ME. Assuming H2O (inner HZ) and CO2 (outer HZ) dominated atmospheres, and scaling the background N2 atmospheric pressure with the radius of the planet, our results indicate that larger planets have wider HZs than do smaller ones. Specifically, with the assumption that smaller planets…
We show that an equal-mass, temporary binary companion to the Sun in the solar birth cluster at a separation of $\sim 10^3 \; \mathrm{\; AU}$ would have increased the likelihood of forming the observed population of outer Oort cloud objects and of capturing Planet Nine. In particular, the discovery of a captured origin for Planet Nine would favor our binary model by an order of magnitude relative to a lone stellar history. Our model predicts an overabundance of dwarf planets, discoverable by LSST, with similar orbits to Planet Nine, which would result from capture by the stellar binary.
Streaming instability is a key mechanism in planet formation, clustering pebbles into planetesimals. It is triggered at a particular disk location where the local volume density of solids exceeds that of the gas. After their formation, planetesimals can grow by feeding from other planetesimals in the birth ring as well as by accreting inwardly drifting pebbles from the outer disk. To investigate the growth of planetesimals at a single location by the streaming instability, we test the conditions under which super-Earths are able to form within the lifetime of the gaseous disk. We modify the \t…
In this paper we investigate the formation of Uranus and Neptune, according to the core-nucleated accretion model, considering formation locations ranging from 12 to 30 AU from the Sun, and with various disk solid-surface densities and core accretion rates. It is shown that in order to form Uranus-like and Neptune-like planets in terms of final mass and solid-to-gas ratio, very specific conditions are required. We also show that when recently proposed high solid accretion rates are assumed, along with solid surface densities about 10 times those in the minimum-mass solar nebula, the challenge …
Tidal Downsizing is the modern version of the Kuiper (1951) scenario of planet formation. Detailed simulations of self-gravitating discs, gas fragments, dust grain dynamics, and planet evolutionary calculations are summarised here and used to build a predictive planet formation model and population synthesis. A new interpretation of exoplanetary and debris disc data, the Solar System's origins, and the links between planets and brown dwarfs is offered. This interpretation is contrasted with the current observations and the predictions of the Core Accretion theory. Observations that can disting…
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submilimeter Array (ALMA) recently revealed a set of nearly concentric gaps in the protoplanetary disk surrounding the young star HL Tau. If these are carved by forming gas giants, this provides the first set of orbital initial conditions for planets as they emerge from their birth disks. Using N-body integrations, we have followed the evolution of the system for 5 Gyr to explore the possible outcomes. We find that HL Tau initial conditions scaled down to the size of typically observed exoplanet orbits naturally produce several populations in the observed exoplanet…
Nautilus Space Observatory: Unveiling the Diversity and Origin of Sub-Neptunes with the Nautilus Space Observatory
Arizona State University(亚利桑那州立大学);University of Arizona(亚利桑那大学);Massachusetts Institute of Technology(麻省理工学院);Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences(哈佛保罗工程与应用科学学院);Harvard University(哈佛大学)
We perform a simulation using the Astrophysical Multipurpose Software Environment of the Orion Trapezium star cluster in which the evolution of the stars and the dynamics of planetary systems are taken into account. The initial conditions from earlier simulations were selected in which the size and mass distributions of the observed circumstellar disks in this cluster are satisfactorily reproduced. Four, five, or size planets per star were introduced in orbit around the 500 solar-like stars with a maximum orbital separation of 400au. Our study focuses on the production of free-floating planets…
The formation of gas giant planets must occur during the first few Myr of a star's lifetime, when the protoplanetary disc still contains sufficient gas to be accreted onto the planetary core. The majority of protoplanetary discs are exposed to strong ultraviolet irradiation from nearby massive stars, which drives winds and depletes the mass budget for planet formation. It remains unclear to what degree external photoevaporation affects the formation of massive planets. In this work, we present a simple one dimensional model for the growth and migration of a massive planet under the influence o…
Chemical abundance studies of the Sun and solar twins have demonstrated that the solar composition of refractory elements is depleted when compared to volatile elements, which could be due to the formation of terrestrial planets. In order to further examine this scenario, we conducted a line-by-line differential chemical abundance analysis of the terrestrial planet host Kepler-10 and fourteen of its stellar twins. Stellar parameters and elemental abundances of Kepler-10 and its stellar twins were obtained with very high precision using a strictly differential analysis of high quality CFHT, HET…
Gravitational interactions in star-forming regions are capable of disrupting and destroying planetary systems, as well as creating new ones. In particular, a planet can be stolen, where it is directly exchanged between passing stars during an interaction; or captured, where a planet is first ejected from its birth system and is free-floating for a period of time, before being captured by a passing star. We perform sets of direct N-body simulations of young, substructured star-forming regions, and follow their evolution for 10 Myr in order to determine how many planets are stolen and captured, …