Evolution of spin direction of accreting magnetic protostars and spin-orbit misalignment in exoplanetary systems

By D. Lai, Francois Foucart, D. Lin. Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, 2010

193 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Recent observations have shown that in many exoplanetary systems the spin axis of the parent star is misaligned with the planet's orbital axis. These have been used to argue against the scenario that short-period planets migrated to their present-day locations due to tidal interactions with their natal discs. However, this interpretation is based on the assumption that the spins of young stars are parallel to the rotation axes of protostellar discs around them. We show that the interaction between a magnetic star and its circumstellar disc can (although not always) have the effect of pushing the stellar spin axis away from the disc angular momentum axis toward the perpendicular state and even the retrograde state. Planets formed in the disc may therefore have their orbital axes misaligned with the stellar spin axis, even before any additional planet-planet scatterings or Kozai interactions take place. In general, magnetosphere–disc interactions lead to a broad distribution of the spin–orbit angles, with some systems aligned and other systems misaligned.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ed09587c0c049f9a94ecdb19924551f0f37bd989

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. S. Naoz
2. J. Winn
3. J. Johnson
4. G. Marcy
5. D. Lai
6. Andrew W. Howard
7. Gregory Laughlin
8. F. Rasio

In Education

1. J. Winn
2. I. Thompson
3. Gregory Laughlin
4. J. Johnson
5. Yanqin Wu
6. Y. Lithwick
7. S. Naoz
8. F. Rasio

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

1. Y. Lithwick
2. C. Beaugé
3. D. Nesvorný
4. D. Lai
5. Yanqin Wu
6. S. Naoz
7. J. Winn
8. Andrew W. Howard

Citations in the corpus

• OBLIQUITIES OF HOT JUPITER HOST STARS: EVIDENCE FOR TIDAL INTERACTIONS AND PRIMORDIAL MISALIGNMENTS (2012, background): “A completely different mechanism for generating primordial misalignments was proposed by Lai et al. (2011), relying on a magnetic interaction between a young star and the inner edge of its accretion disk.”
• The planet nine hypothesis (2019, background): “, 2012; Batygin & Adams, 2013; Lai, 2014; Spalding & Batygin, 2014, 2015), as well as magnetohydrodynamic interactions between the stellar magnetospheres and the inner edges of their circumstellar disks (Lai et al., 2011).”
• INTERNAL GRAVITY WAVES IN MASSIVE STARS: ANGULAR MOMENTUM TRANSPORT (2013, background): “They can be categorized in terms of reorientation of either the protoplanets’ natal disks (Bate 2010; Lai et al. 2011; Batygin 2012) or the stellar spin (Rogers et al. 2012).”
• Tidal dissipation in planet-hosting stars: damping of spin-orbit misalignment and survival of hot Jupiters (2011, background): “…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 assembly of protoplanetary discs (Bate et al. 2010; Thies et al. 2011) may also play a role in producing spin-orbit…”
• IN SITU FORMATION AND DYNAMICAL EVOLUTION OF HOT JUPITER SYSTEMS (2015, background): “Within the context of our model, commonly observed spin-orbit misalignments are most readily ascribed to primordial star-disk inclinations (Bate et al. 2010; Lai et al. 2011; Batygin 2012), while the associated correlation between orbital obliquity and stellar effective temperature can be attributed”
• Secular Dynamics in Hierarchical Three-Body Systems (2011, background): “4 This assumption can be invalid if there are significant magnetic interactions between the star and the protoplanetary disk (Lai et al. 2010) or if there are interaction with another star in a stellar cluster 1− e21 cos itot, which the standard formalism assumes to be constant (dashed…”
• SECULAR CHAOS AND THE PRODUCTION OF HOT JUPITERS (2010, background): “A difficulty with this scenario is that it should produce planets whose orbit normals are aligned with the stellar spin axis (for an opposing view, however, see Lai et al. 2011).”
• MULTIPLE-PLANET SCATTERING AND THE ORIGIN OF HOT JUPITERS (2011, background): “…could be produced by the cumulative effect of stellar flares, late unisotropic (Bondi-Hoyle) accretion on the star (Throop & Bally 2008, Moeckel & Throop 2009), and due to the interaction between the stellar magnetic field and the protoplanetary disk (Lai et al. 2011, and the references therein).”