The destruction of inner planetary systems during high-eccentricity migration of gas giants
Alexander J. Mustill, Melven B. Davies, Anders Johansen
(Submitted on 24 Feb 2015)
Hot Jupiters are giant planets on orbits a few hundredths of an AU. They do not share their system with low-mass close-in planets, despite these latter being exceedingly common. Two migration channels for hot Jupiters have been proposed: through a protoplanetary gas disc or by tidal circularisation of highly-eccentric planets. We show that highly-eccentric giant planets that will become hot Jupiters clear out any low-mass inner planets in the system, explaining the observed lack of such companions to hot Jupiters. A less common outcome of the interaction is that the giant planet is ejected by the inner planets. Furthermore, the interaction can implant giant planets on moderately-high eccentricities at semimajor axes <1 AU, a region otherwise hard to populate. Our work supports the hypothesis that most hot Jupiters reached their current orbits following a phase of high eccentricity, possibly excited by other planetary or stellar companions.
Comments:10 pages, submitted to ApJ
Subjects:Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as:arXiv:1502.06971 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1502.06971v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Alexander Mustill [view email]
[v1] Tue, 24 Feb 2015 21:00:18 GMT (480kb)
