SECULAR CHAOS AND THE PRODUCTION OF HOT JUPITERS

By Yanqin Wu, Y. Lithwick. 2010

241 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In a planetary system with two or more well-spaced, eccentric, inclined planets, secular interactions may lead to chaos. The innermost planet may gradually become very eccentric and/or inclined as a result of the secular degrees of freedom drifting toward equipartition of angular momentum deficit. Secular chaos is known to be responsible for the eventual destabilization of Mercury in our own solar system. Here we focus on systems with three giant planets. We characterize the secular chaos and demonstrate the criterion for it to occur, but leave a detailed understanding of secular chaos to a companion paper. After an extended period of eccentricity diffusion, the inner planet's pericenter can approach the star to within a few stellar radii. Strong tidal interactions and ensuing tidal dissipation extract orbital energy from the planet and pull it inward, creating a hot Jupiter. In contrast to other proposed channels for the production of hot Jupiters, such a scenario (which we term “secular migration”) explains a range of observations: the pile-up of hot Jupiters at 3 day orbital periods, the fact that hot Jupiters are in general less massive than other radial velocity planets, that they may have misaligned inclinations with respect to stellar spin, and that they have few easily detectable companions (but may have giant companions in distant orbits). Secular migration can also explain close-in planets as low in mass as Neptune; and an aborted secular migration can explain the “warm Jupiters” at intermediate distances. In addition, the frequency of hot Jupiters formed via secular migration increases with stellar age. We further suggest that secular chaos may be responsible for the observed eccentricities of giant planets at larger distances and that these planets could exhibit significant spin–orbit misalignment.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/83d0f330a3e69734f8618967f315b9374c155c74

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Citations in the corpus

• Photoevaporation and high-eccentricity migration created the sub-Jovian desert (2018, background): “…companion, followed by tidal dissipation in the planet which circularizes the orbit (e.g. Wu & Murray 2003; Fabrycky & Tremaine 2007; Nagasawa, Ida & Bessho 2008; Wu & Lithwick 2011; Beauge & Nesvorny 2012; Naoz et al. 2012; Petrovich 2015; Anderson, Storch & Lai 2016; Munoz, Lai & Liu 2016).”
• The TRAPPIST survey of southern transiting planets. I. Thirty eclipses of the ultra-short period planet WASP-43 b (2012, background): “…with tidal dissipation could have shaped their present orbit has raised a lot of interest recently (e.g. Fabrycky & Tremaine 2007, Naoz et al. 2011, Wu & Lithwick 2011), partially thanks to the discovery that a significant fraction of these planets have high orbital obliquities that suggest past…”
• PLANET OCCURRENCE WITHIN 0.25 AU OF SOLAR-TYPE STARS FROM KEPLER (2011, background): “Thus, standard planet formation theory probably requires additional planet–planet gravitational interactions to explain these non-circular and non-coplanar orbits (Chatterjee et al. 2011; Wu & Lithwick 2011).”
• FRIENDS OF HOT JUPITERS. I. A RADIAL VELOCITY SEARCH FOR MASSIVE, LONG-PERIOD COMPANIONS TO CLOSE-IN GAS GIANT PLANETS (2013, background): “…Teyssandier et al. 2013b), which requires a distant stellar companion, planet-planet scattering (e.g., Chatterjee et al. 2008; Nagasawa et al. 2008), and secular chaotic excursions (Wu & Lithwick 2011; Lithwick & Wu 2013) frequently produce close-in planets with misaligned and/or eccentric orbits.”
• ORBITAL PHASE VARIATIONS OF THE ECCENTRIC GIANT PLANET HAT-P-2b (2013, background): “…of 0.07 AU from its host star, indicating that it must have migrated inward via a process such as gas disk migration (Lin et al. 1996), planet-planet scattering (Rasio & Ford 1996), secular interactions (Wu & Lithwick 2011), or Kozai migration (Weidenschilling & Marzari 1996; Naoz et al. 2011).”
• GIANT PLANETS ORBITING METAL-RICH STARS SHOW SIGNATURES OF PLANET–PLANET INTERACTIONS (2013, background): “…(e.g. Goldreich & Tremaine 1980), and migration via gravitational perturbations, either by stars (e.g. stellar binary Kozai, Wu & Murray 2003) or sibling planets (including planetary Kozai, e.g. Naoz et al. 2011; scattering, e.g. Rasio & Ford 1996; and secular chaos, e.g. Wu & Lithwick 2011).”
• The minimum-mass extrasolar nebula: in situ formation of close-in super-Earths (2012, background): “Such orbits can circularize by stellar tidal friction while retaining their large inclinations (for a general overview of the dynamics, see Wu & Lithwick 2011).”
• The GAPS Programme with HARPS-N at TNG - XIV. Investigating giant planet migration history via improved eccentricity and mass determination for 231 transiting planets (2017, unknown): “…perturbations induced by a distant stellar or planetary companion on a highly inclined orbit (e.g. Fabrycky & Tremaine 2007; Naoz et al. 2011), secular dynamics in multi-planet systems (e.g. Wu & Lithwick 2011; Hamers et al. 2017), or a combination of these processes (e.g. Nagasawa et al. 2008).”
• IN SITU FORMATION AND DYNAMICAL EVOLUTION OF HOT JUPITER SYSTEMS (2015, background): “In some contrast, a subset of mechanisms associated with the high-eccentricity channel of orbital migration (e.g. the secular chaos model; Wu and Lithwick 2011) do preferentially produce hot Jupiters with lower masses.”
• Tidal dissipation in planet-hosting stars: damping of spin-orbit misalignment and survival of hot Jupiters (2011, background): “…planets or Kozai effect induced by a distant companion (e.g., Wu & Murray 2003; Fabrycky & Tremaine 2007; Nagasawa et al. 2008; Naoz et al. 2011a,b; Wu & Lithwick 2011; Katz et al. 2011), although other effects involving star-disc interactions (Lai et al. 2011; Foucart & Lai 2011) and the…”
• MULTIPLE-PLANET SCATTERING AND THE ORIGIN OF HOT JUPITERS (2011, methodology): “Conversely, Wu & Lithwick (2011) used the equilibrium tide model (e.g. Hut 1981, Mardling 2007) which is strictly valid only for low-to-moderate eccentricities.”
• ECCENTRICITY GROWTH AND ORBIT FLIP IN NEAR-COPLANAR HIERARCHICAL THREE-BODY SYSTEMS (2013, background): “…& Ford 2010; Correia et al. 2011; Naoz et al. 2011, 2012), planet-planet scattering (Ford & Rasio 2008; Nagasawa & Ida 2011; Chatterjee et al. 2011; Boley et al. 2012) and secular chaos excursions (Wu & Lithwick 2011) can explain large obliquity, but cannot explain counter-orbiting configurations.”