The minimum-mass extrasolar nebula: in situ formation of close-in super-Earths

By E. Chiang, Gregory Laughlin. 2012

372 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Close-in super-Earths, with radii R = 2-5 R_Earth and orbital periods P < 100 days, orbit more than half, and perhaps nearly all Sun-like stars in the universe. We use this omnipresent population to construct the minimum-mass extrasolar nebula (MMEN), the circumstellar disk of solar-composition solids and gas from which such planets formed, if they formed near their current locations and did not migrate. In a series of back-of-the-envelope calculations, we demonstrate how in-situ formation in the MMEN is fast, efficient, and can reproduce many of the observed properties of close-in super-Earths, including their gas-to-rock fractions. Testable predictions are discussed.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4c0dfe295c15ae713d05fb93562be2f5c491997c

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Citations in the corpus

ZODIACAL EXOPLANETS IN TIME (ZEIT). III. A SHORT-PERIOD PLANET ORBITING A PRE-MAIN-SEQUENCE STAR IN THE UPPER SCORPIUS OB ASSOCIATION (2016, background): “Whether these planets formed near their present position (in situ), i.e., from circumstellar material interior to 0.5 AU (e.g., Chiang & Laughlin 2013; Ogihara et al. 2015), or accreted at distances > 1AU, and later migrated inwards (e.g., Schlaufman et al. 2009; Raymond & Cossou 2014) is actively…”
One Solution to the Mass Budget Problem for Planet Formation: Optically Thick Disks with Dust Scattering (2019, methodology): “This mean mass can barely explain the averaged mass of solids in exoplanets based on the exoplanet demographics derived by Kepler (e.g. Dong & Zhu 2013; Chiang & Laughlin 2013; Najita & Kenyon 2014).”
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE NEAR-IR TRANSMISSION SPECTROSCOPY OF THE SUPER-EARTH HD 97658B (2014, background): “…tightly packed multiple planet systems (e.g., Lissauer et al. 2011; Fabrycky et al. 2012; Steffen et al. 2013), and there is an ongoing debate as to whether these systems formed in place or migrated in from more distant orbits (Hansen & Murray 2012; Chiang & Laughlin 2013; Raymond & Cossou 2014).”
Breaking the chains: hot super-Earth systems from migration and disruption of compact resonant chains (2017, background): “…de la Côte d' Azur user on 17 May 2018 Morbidelli & Raymond 2016): (1) in situ accretion (Raymond et al. 2008; Hansen & Murray 2012, 2013; Chiang & Laughlin 2013; Hansen 2014; Ogihara, Morbidelli & Guillot 2015a,b) or (2) assembly of planets at moderate or larger distances from the star…”
A STELLAR-MASS-DEPENDENT DROP IN PLANET OCCURRENCE RATES (2014, background): “…times inward of the snow line and for a minimum-mass solar nebula disk are much longer than gas disk lifetimes Hence, these planets need to form outside the snow line (e.g., Kennedy & Kenyon 2008), or form in a disk with a higher surface density inside the snow line (Chiang & Laughlin 2013).”
Compositional Imprints in Density–Distance–Time: A Rocky Composition for Close-in Low-mass Exoplanets from the Location of the Valley of Evaporation (2017, background): “These cases represent limiting cases of the different theories for the formation of the numerous class of close-in, low-mass planets (e.g., Ida & Lin 2010; Chiang & Laughlin 2013; Raymond & Cossou 2014; Baruteau et al. 2016).”
TESTING IN SITU ASSEMBLY WITH THE KEPLER PLANET CANDIDATE SAMPLE (2013, methodology): “Interestingly, these criteria yield almost exactly the same disk as has been recently derived by Chiang & Laughlin (2013), using an analogue of the Minimum Mass Solar Nebula argument, but applied to the observed Kepler candidate sample.”
A FRAMEWORK FOR CHARACTERIZING THE ATMOSPHERES OF LOW-MASS LOW-DENSITY TRANSITING PLANETS (2013, background): “Formation models are now aiming to understand the frequency of such planets, their formation timescale, and how often they end up in compact orbital configurations (Hansen & Murray 2012; Rogers et al. 2011; Ikoma & Hori 2012; Chiang & Laughlin 2013).”
MOST 1.6 EARTH-RADIUS PLANETS ARE NOT ROCKY (2014, background): “…whether the compact close-in systems of low-density planets discovered by Kepler formed in situ (e.g, Hansen & Murray 2012; Ikoma & Hori 2012; Chiang & Laughlin 2013), or alternatively acquired their volatiles farther out in the disk and migrated in to their current locations (e.g, Rogers et…”
Spacing of Kepler Planets: Sculpting by Dynamical Instability (2015, background): “Dynamical Scuplting The formation of Kepler planets themselves is not yet understood and different theories have been proposed (Terquem & Papaloizou 2007; Ida & Lin 2010; Hansen & Murray 2012; Chiang & Laughlin 2013; Chatterjee & Tan 2014).”
About 30% of Sun-like Stars Have Kepler-like Planetary Systems: A Study of Their Intrinsic Architecture (2018, background): “As was first pointed out by Chiang & Laughlin (2013), the Kepler systems contain more solid mass in their inner regions than is expected from a minimum-mass Solar nebula (MMSN).”
Dust Evolution and the Formation of Planetesimals (2016, methodology): “It should be noted that those observations were most sensitive to the disk regions beyond the size of the solar system (on which the MMSN model and the model of Chiang & Laughlin 2013 is based).”
BREEDING SUPER-EARTHS AND BIRTHING SUPER-PUFFS IN TRANSITIONAL DISKS (2015, methodology): “Throughout this paper, our proxy for a gas-rich disk is the “minimum-mass extrasolar nebula” (MMEN) of Chiang & Laughlin (2013): a solar-composition disk having enough solid material to form Kepler-like systems.”
Dearth of short-period Neptunian exoplanets - a desert in period-mass and period-radius planes (2016, background): “…for the lower boundary of the desert and for the existence of the super-Earth ridge, we mention the recent works that suggested in situ models for the formation of short-period super-Earths (Lee & Chiang (2016); see also Hansen & Murray (2012); Chiang & Laughlin (2013) and Lee et al. (2014)).”
The structure of protoplanetary discs around evolving young stars (2014, background): “It is then often assumed that other protoplanetary discs have similar power law structures (Chiang & Laughlin 2013), however applying it toall extrasolar systems is troublesome (Raymond & Cossou 2014).”