Related papers: Planets on the Edge
Tidal interactions between short-period exoplanets and their host stars drive orbital decay and have likely led to engulfment of planets by their stars. Precise transit timing surveys, with baselines now spanning decades for some planets,…
The WASP-18 system, with its massive and extremely close-in planet, WASP-18b (M$_{p}$ = 10.3M$_{J}$, a = 0.02 AU, P = 22.6 hours), is one of the best known exoplanet laboratories to directly measure Q', the modified tidal quality factor and…
Observations in the past decade have revealed extrasolar planets with a wide range of orbital semimajor axes and eccentricities. Based on the present understanding of planet formation via core accretion and oligarchic growth, we expect that…
Gas giant planets orbiting within 0.1 AU of their host stars, unlikely to have formed in situ, are evidence for planetary migration. It is debated whether the typical hot Jupiter smoothly migrated inward from its formation location through…
We have analysed radial velocity measurements for known transiting exoplanets to study the empirical signature of tidal orbital evolution for close-in planets. Compared to standard eccentricity determination, our approach is modified to…
Transiting planets are generally close enough to their host stars that tides may govern their orbital and thermal evolution of these planets. We present calculations of the tidal evolution of recently discovered transiting planets and…
The orbital period of the hot Jupiter WASP-4b appears to be decreasing at a rate of $-8.64 \pm 1.26$ msec/yr, based on transit-timing measurements spanning 12 years. Proposed explanations for the period change include tidal orbital decay,…
Hot Jupiters have been perceived as loners devoid of planetary companions in close orbital proximity. However, recent discoveries based on space-borne precise photometry have revealed that at least some fraction of giant planets coexists…
Although close-orbiting, massive exoplanets -- known as hot and warm Jupiters -- are among the most observationally accessible known planets, their formation pathways are still not universally agreed upon. One method to constrain the…
We report the discovery of WTS-2 b, an unusually close-in 1.02-day hot Jupiter (Mp=1.12MJ, Rp=1.363RJ) orbiting a K2V star, which has a possible gravitationally-bound M-dwarf companion at 0.6 arcsec separation contributing ~20 percent of…
WASP-19b has the shortest orbital period of any known exoplanet, orbiting at only 1.2 times the Roche tidal radius. By observing the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect we show that WASP-19b's orbit is aligned, with lambda = 4.6 +/- 5.2 degrees.…
Following the suggestion of Black (1997) that some massive extrasolar planets may be associated with the tail of the distribution of stellar companions, we investigate a scenario in which 5 < N < 100 planetary mass objects are assumed to…
We investigate the possibility of substantial inflation of short-period Jupiter-mass planets, as a result of their internal tidal dissipation associated with the synchronization and circularization of their orbits. We employ the simplest…
Time-dependent insolation in a planetary atmosphere induces a mass quadrupole upon which the stellar tidal acceleration can exert a force. This "thermal tide" force can give rise to secular torques on the planet and orbit as well as radial…
High eccentricity tidal migration (HEM) is a promising channel for the origins of hot Jupiters and hot Neptunes. In the typical HEM scenario, a planet forms beyond the ice line, but alternatively a planet can disk migrate or form warm and…
Jovian planet formation has been shown to be strongly correlated with host star metallicity, which is thought to be a proxy for disk solids. Observationally, previous works have indicated that jovian planets preferentially form around stars…
Tidal dissipation in planetary interiors is one of the key physical mechanisms that drive the evolution of star-planet and planet-moon systems. New constraints are now obtained both in the Solar and exoplanetary systems. Tidal dissipation…
The discovery of giant planets in wide orbits represents a major challenge for planet formation theory. In the standard core accretion paradigm planets are expected to form at radial distances $\lesssim 20$ au in order to form massive cores…
Several white dwarfs with atmospheric metal pollution have been found to host small planetary bodies (planetesimals) orbiting near the tidal disruption radius. We study the physical properties and dynamical origin of these bodies under the…
We propose that two of the most surprising results so far among exoplanet discoveries are related: the existences of both hot Jupiters and the high frequency of multi-planet systems with periods $P\lesssim200$~days. In this paradigm, the…