The imprint of X-ray photoevaporation of planet-forming discs on the orbital distribution of giant planets

Monsch, Kristina; Ercolano, Barbara; Picogna, Giovanni; Preibisch, Thomas und Rau, Markus Michael (2019): The imprint of X-ray photoevaporation of planet-forming discs on the orbital distribution of giant planets. In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 483, No. 3: pp. 3448-3458

Abstract

High-energy radiation from a planet host star can have strong influence on the final habitability of a system through several mechanisms. In this context we have constructed a catalogue containing the X-ray luminosities, as well as basic stellar and planetary properties of all known stars hosting giant planets (> 0.1 M-J) that have been observed by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, XMM-Newton, and/or ROSAT. Specifically in this paper we present a first application of this catalogue to search for a possible imprint of X-ray photoevaporation of planet-forming discs on the present-day orbital distribution of the observed giant planets. We found a suggestive void in the semimajor axis, a, versus X-ray luminosity, L-x, plane, roughly located between a similar to 0.05-1 au and L-x similar to 10(27)-10(29) erg s(-1), which would be expected if photoevaporation played a dominant role in the migration history of these systems. However, due to the small observational sample size, the statistical significance of this feature cannot be proven at this point.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Physics
• Subjects: 500 Science > 530 Physics
• ISSN: 0035-8711
• Language: English