Related papers: What is the maximum radius of cold planets?
The bulk composition of an exoplanet is commonly inferred from its average density. For small planets, however, the average density is not unique within the range of compositions. Variations of a number of important planetary…
Tidal heating is often used to interpret "radius anomaly" of hot Jupiters (i.e. radii of a large fraction of hot Jupiters are in excess of 1.2 Jupiter radius which cannot be interpreted by the standard theory of planetary evolution). In…
The recent detection of planets around very low mass stars raises the question of the formation, composition and potential habitability of these objects. We use planetary system formation models to infer the properties, in particular their…
`Hot jupiters,' giant planets with orbits very close to their parent stars, are thought to form farther away and migrate inward via interactions with a massive gas disk. If a giant planet forms and migrates quickly, the planetesimal…
Condensed planets contract or expand as their temperature changes. With the exception of the effect of phase changes, this phenomenon is generally interpreted as being solely related to the thermal expansivity of the planet's components.…
We identify two classes of transiting planet, based on their equilibrium temperatures and Safronov numbers. We examine various possible explanations for the dichotomy. It may reflect the influence of planet or planetesimal scattering in…
There have been many proposed explanations for the larger-than-expected radii of some transiting hot Jupiters, including either stellar or orbital energy deposition deep in the atmosphere or deep in the interior. In this paper, we explore…
Mass and radius of planets transiting their host stars are provided by radial velocity and photometric observations. Structural models of solid exoplanet interiors are then constructed by using equations of state for the radial density…
Transiting planets with radii 2-3 $R_\bigoplus$ are much more numerous than larger planets. We propose that this drop-off is so abrupt because at $R$ $\sim$ 3 $R_\bigoplus$, base-of-atmosphere pressure is high enough for the atmosphere to…
The physical shape of a giant planet can reveal important information about its centrifugal potential, and therefore, its rotation. In this paper I investigate the response of Jupiter's shape to differential rotation on cylinders of various…
Planets interact with their host stars through gravity, radiation and magnetic fields, and for those giant planets that orbit their stars within ~10 stellar radii (~0.1 AU for a sun-like star), star-planet interactions (SPI) are observable…
Detection of Jupiter mass companions to nearby solar type stars with precise radial velocity measurements is now routine, and Doppler surveys are moving towards lower velocity amplitudes. The detection of several Neptune-mass planets with…
From wispy gas giants on the verge of disruption to tiny rocky bodies already falling apart, short-period exoplanets pose a severe puzzle to theories of planet formation and orbital evolution. By far most of the planets known beyond the…
The field of extrasolar planets has rapidly expanded to include the detection of planets with masses smaller than that of Uranus. Many of these are expected to have little or no hydrogen and helium gas and we might find Earth analogs among…
Several short-period Jupiter-mass planets have been discovered around nearby solar-type stars. During the circularization of their orbits, the dissipation of tidal disturbance by their host stars heats the interior and inflates the sizes of…
Among the hundred of known extrasolar planets, about 15% are closer than 0.1 AU from their parent stars. But there are extremely few detections of planets orbiting in less than 3 days. At this limit the planet HD209458b has been found to…
Exoplanets smaller than Neptune are numerous, but the nature of the planet populations in the 1-4 Earth radii range remains a mystery. The complete Kepler sample of Q1-Q17 exoplanet candidates shows a radius gap at ~ 2 Earth radii, as…
The most irradiated transiting hot Jupiters are characterized by anomalously inflated radii, sometimes exceeding Jupiter's size by more than 60%. While different theoretical explanations have been applied, none of them provide a universal…
The radii of hot Jupiters are still not fully understood and all of the proposed explanations are based on the idea that these close-in giant planets possess hot interiors. We approach the radius anomaly problem by adopting a statistical…
We produce the simple formula for the radius R of a cold body of mass M, (4 pi rho/3)^{1/3} R = I.M^{1/3} / [1+ (M/Mp)^{2/3}], where I is one for white dwarfs with non-relativistic electrons, but depends on the ratio of the total mass to…