Halting Planet Migration in the Evacuated Centers of Protoplanetary Disks
Astrophysics
2016-08-30 v1
Abstract
Precise Doppler searches for extrasolar planets find a surfeit of planets with orbital periods of 3-4 days, and no planets with orbital periods less than 3 days. The circumstellar distance, R_0, where small grains in a protoplanetary disk reach sublimation temperature (~1500 K) corresponds to a period of ~6 days. Interior to R_0, turbulent accretion due to magneto-rotational instability may evacuate the disk center. We suggest that planets with orbital periods of 3-4 days are so common because migrating planets halt once this evacuated region contains the sites of their exterior 2:1 Lindblad resonances.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0206232,
title = {Halting Planet Migration in the Evacuated Centers of Protoplanetary Disks},
author = {Marc J. Kuchner and Myron Lecar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0206232},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
9 pages, 1 figure, to appear in ApJ letters