English

Tidal Downsizing Model. IV. Destructive feedback in planets

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2016-07-27 v1

Abstract

I argue that feedback is as important to formation of planets as it is to formation of stars and galaxies. Energy released by massive solid cores puffs up pre-collapse gas giant planets, making them vulnerable to tidal disruptions by their host stars. I find that feedback is the ultimate reason for some of the most robust properties of the observed exoplanet populations: the rarity of gas giants at all separations from 0.1\sim 0.1 to 100\sim 100~AU, the abundance of 10M\sim 10 M_\oplus cores but dearth of planets more massive than 20M\sim 20 M_\oplus. Feedback effects can also explain (i) rapid assembly of massive cores at large separations as needed for Uranus, Neptune and the suspected HL Tau planets; (ii) the small core in Jupiter yet large cores in Uranus and Neptune; (iii) the existence of rare "metal monster" planets such as CoRoT-20b, a gas giant made of heavy elements by up to 50\sim 50\%.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1510.01630,
  title  = {Tidal Downsizing Model. IV. Destructive feedback in planets},
  author = {Sergei Nayakshin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.01630},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

17 pages, 10 figures, submitted to MNRAS (version significantly expanded to address referee's report)

R2 v1 2026-06-22T11:14:01.142Z