Giant Planet Occurrence in the Stellar Mass-Metallicity Plane

By J. Johnson, K. Aller, Andrew W. Howard, J. Crepp. 2010

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Correlations between stellar properties and the occurrence rate of exoplanets can be used to inform the target selection of future planet-search efforts and provide valuable clues about the planet-formation process. We analyze a sample of 1266 stars drawn from the California Planet Survey targets to determine the empirical functional form describing the likelihood of a star harboring a giant planet as a function of its mass and metallicity. Our stellar sample ranges from M dwarfs with masses as low as 0.2 M⊙ to intermediate-mass subgiants with masses as high as 1.9 M⊙. In agreement with previous studies, our sample exhibits a planet-metallicity correlation at all stellar masses; the fraction of stars that harbor giant planets scales as f ∝ 101.2[Fe/H]. We can rule out a flat metallicity relationship among our evolved stars (at 98% confidence), which argues that the high metallicities of stars with planets is not likely due to convective envelope “pollution.” Our data also rule out a constant planet occurrence rate for [Fe/H] < 0, indicating that giant planets continue to become rarer at sub-Solar metallicities. We also find that planet occurrence increases with stellar mass (f ∝ M⋆), characterized by a rise from 3% around M dwarfs (0.5 M⊙) to 14% around A stars (2 M⊙), at Solar metallicity. We argue that the correlation between stellar properties and giant planet occurrence is strong supporting evidence of the core-accretion model of planet formation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/87182c0db9832232f1c792a98c0c46843487a7ad

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Citations in the corpus

Imaging Extrasolar Giant Planets (2016, background): “…occurrence rate around massive stars analogous to the well-established correlation at small separations (Johnson et al. 2007; Lovis & Mayor 2007; Johnson et al. 2010; Bowler et al. 2010b), this trend is not yet statistically significant at wide orbital distances and requires larger sample sizes…”
The California-Kepler Survey. IV. Metal-rich Stars Host a Greater Diversity of Planets (2017, methodology): “Guo et al. (2017) repeated the Johnson et al. (2010) analysis, but restricted the study to hot Jupiters and found β = 2.1 ± 0.7.”
Protoplanetary disk lifetimes vs stellar mass and possible implications for giant planet populations (2015, background): “Observational results tentatively suggest that massive stars are more likely to host gas giants than their low-mass counterparts (Johnson et al. 2010).”
PROSPECTING IN LATE-TYPE DWARFS: A CALIBRATION OF INFRARED AND VISIBLE SPECTROSCOPIC METALLICITIES OF LATE K AND M DWARFS SPANNING 1.5 dex (2012, background): “Accurate metallicities are also necessary to study any correlation between metallicity and planet frequency (e.g. Johnson et al. 2010; Mann et al. 2012).”
PLANETS AROUND LOW-MASS STARS (PALMS). IV. THE OUTER ARCHITECTURE OF M DWARF PLANETARY SYSTEMS (2014, methodology): “The well-established correlation between stellar host mass and giant planet frequency offers one of the strongest cases for core accretion at small separations (.2.5 AU; Johnson et al. 2007; Johnson et al. 2010).”
THE RADIUS DISTRIBUTION OF PLANETS AROUND COOL STARS (2013, result): “This distribution also indicates that planets larger than ∼3 R⊕ are very rare around cool stars, consistent with the findings of RV surveys (Endl et al. 2003; Johnson et al. 2010b,a; Bonfils et al. 2013).”
REVEALING A UNIVERSAL PLANET–METALLICITY CORRELATION FOR PLANETS OF DIFFERENT SIZES AROUND SOLAR-TYPE STARS (2013, background): “For example, studies found that gas-giant planets occur more frequently around metal-rich stars (Gonzalez 1997; Santos et al. 2004; Fischer & Valenti 2005; Johnson et al. 2010).”
A STEEPER THAN LINEAR DISK MASS–STELLAR MASS SCALING RELATION (2016, background): “These include (i) a positive correlation between stellar mass and the occurrence rate of Jovian planets within a few au (e.g., Johnson et al. 2010; Howard et al. 2012; Bonfils et al. 2013), although no correlation is present for the population of hot Jupiters within a 10-day period (Obermeier et…”
FUNDAMENTAL PROPERTIES OF KEPLER PLANET-CANDIDATE HOST STARS USING ASTEROSEISMOLOGY (2013, unknown): “…surveys have yielded two important correlations: gas giant planets occur more frequently around stars of high metallicity (Gonzalez 1997; Santos et al. 2004; Fischer & Valenti 2005) and around more massive stars (Laws et al. 2003; Johnson et al. 2007; Lovis & Mayor 2007; Johnson et al. 2010).”
AN ALL-SKY CATALOG OF BRIGHT M DWARFS (2011, methodology): “Stars as faint asV = 12 are routinely monitored using the High Resolution Spectrometer (HIRES) on the 10 m Keck I Telescope, e.g. Johnson et al. (2007, 2010b), and fainter but highly meritorious stars with transiting planets, e.g. GJ 1214 (Charbonneau et al. 2009), have been observed.”
Chemical abundances of 1111 FGK stars from the HARPS GTO planet search program - Galactic stellar populations and planets (2012, background): “…similar studies for refractory elements (e.g. Bodaghee et al. 2003; Gilli et al. 2006; Takeda et al. 2007; Neves et al. 2009; Kang et al. 2011) and for iron (e.g. Gonzalez et al. 2001; Santos et al. 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005; Fischer & Valenti 2005; Bond et al 2006, 2008; Johnson et al. 2010).”
A FIRST COMPARISON OF KEPLER PLANET CANDIDATES IN SINGLE AND MULTIPLE SYSTEMS (2011, background): “This might be related to the tendency for close-in giant planets to be less common around low-mass stars (Johnson et al. 2010), and/or to the tendency for small planets in the RP range 2 to 4 Earth radii to be much more common around cool stars in the Teff range 3600 to 4100 K (Howard et al. 2011).”
CHARACTERIZING THE COOL KOIs. III. KOI 961: A SMALL STAR WITH LARGE PROPER MOTION AND THREE SMALL PLANETS (2012, methodology): “The planet-metallicity correlation was originally discovered for Sun-like F, G and K-type stars, and correlated the stellar metallicity to the likelihood of hosting a Jovian-mass planet (e.g. Santos et al. 2001; Fischer & Valenti 2005; Johnson et al. 2010a).”
ON THE LOW FALSE POSITIVE PROBABILITIES OF KEPLER PLANET CANDIDATES (2011, background): “…the blended planet scenario because of their larger intrinsic transit depth, are the least common—only ∼1% of solar-type stars host close-in giant planets, and this occurrence rate is even lower for lower-mass stars (Endl et al. 2003; Johnson et al. 2010), which are the most common blending stars.”
CHARACTERIZING THE COOL KOIs. II. THE M DWARF KOI-254 AND ITS HOT JUPITER (2011, background): “This notion is further bolstered by the elevated occurrence of giant planets around stars more massive than the Sun (Johnson et al. 2007, 2010a).”
SOPHIE velocimetry of Kepler transit candidates XVII. The physical properties of giant exoplanets within 400 days of period (2015, background): “The correlation between the fraction of giant-planet hosts and their metallicity was revealed early in the solar neighborhood (Santos et al. 2001), and revised as the number of detections increases (Fischer & Valenti 2005; Johnson et al. 2010; Sousa et al. 2011; Mortier et al. 2013).”
SWEET-Cat: A catalogue of parameters for Stars With ExoplanETs - I. New atmospheric parameters and masses for 48 stars with planets (2013, background): “For example, the exact shape of the metallicity-planet correlation is still debated (Santos et al. 2004b; Johnson et al. 2010; Mortier et al. 2013a).”