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Register a new userHow stars and planets interact: a look through the high-energy window
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Authors
Katja Poppenhaeger
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The architecture of exoplanetary systems is often different from the solar system, with some exoplanets being in close orbits around their host stars and having orbital periods of only a few days. In analogy to interactions between stars in close binary systems, one may expect interactions between the star and the exoplanet as well. From theoretical considerations, effects on the host star through tidal and magnetic interaction with the exoplanet are possible; for the exoplanet, some interesting implications are the evaporation of the planetary atmosphere and potential effects on the planetary magnetism. In this review, several possible interaction pathways and their observational prospects and existing evidence are discussed. A particular emphasis is put on observational opportunities for these kinds of effects in the high-energy regime.
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The formation of planets is one of the major unsolved problems in modern astrophysics. Planets are believed to form out of the material in circumstellar disks known to exist around young stars, and which are a by-product of the star formation process. Therefore, the physical conditions in these disks - structure and composition as a function of stellocentric radius and vertical height, density and temperature profiles of each component - represent the initial conditions under which planets form. Clearly, a good understanding of disk structure and its time evolution are crucial to understanding planet formation, the evolution of young planetary systems (e.g. migration), and the recently discovered, and unanticipated, diversity of planetary architectures. However, the inner disk regions (interior to ~10 AU) most relevant in the context of planet formation are very poorly known, primarily because of observational challenges in spatially resolving this region. In this contribution we discuss opportunities for the next decade from spectrally and spatially resolved observations, and from direct imaging, using infrared long baseline interferometry.
We have completed a high-contrast direct imaging survey for giant planets around 57 debris disk stars as part of the Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign. We achieved median H-band contrasts of 12.4 mag at 0.5 and 14.1 mag at 1 separation. Follow-up observations of the 66 candidates with projected separation < 500 AU show that all of them are background objects. To establish statistical constraints on the underlying giant planet population based on our imaging data, we have developed a new Bayesian formalism that incorporates (1) non-detections, (2) single-epoch candidates, (3) astrometric and (4) photometric information, and (5) the possibility of multiple planets per star to constrain the planet population. Our formalism allows us to include in our analysis the previously known Beta Pictoris and the HR 8799 planets. Our results show at 95% confidence that <13% of debris disk stars have a >5MJup planet beyond 80 AU, and <21% of debris disk stars have a >3MJup planet outside of 40 AU, based on hot-start evolutionary models. We model the population of directly-imaged planets as d^2N/dMda ~ m^alpha a^beta, where m is planet mass and a is orbital semi-major axis (with a maximum value of amax). We find that beta < -0.8 and/or alpha > 1.7. Likewise, we find that beta < -0.8 and/or amax < 200 AU. If we ignore the Beta Pic and HR 8799 planets (should they belong to a rare and distinct group), we find that < 20% of debris disk stars have a > 3MJup planet beyond 10 AU, and beta < -0.8 and/or alpha < -1.5. Our Bayesian constraints are not strong enough to reveal any dependence of the planet frequency on stellar host mass. Studies of transition disks have suggested that about 20% of stars are undergoing planet formation; our non-detections at large separations show that planets with orbital separation > 40 AU and planet masses > 3 MJup do not carve the central holes in these disks.
All the studies of the interaction between tides and a convective flow assume that the large scale tides can be described as a mean shear flow which is damped by small scale fluctuating convective eddies. The convective Reynolds stress is calculated using mixing length theory, accounting for a sharp suppression of dissipation when the turnover timescale is larger than the tidal period. This yields tidal dissipation rates several orders of magnitude too small to account for the circularization periods of late-type binaries or the tidal dissipation factor of giant planets. Here, we argue that the above description is inconsistent, because fluctuations and mean flow should be identified based on the timescale, not on the spatial scale, on which they vary. Therefore, the standard picture should be reversed, with the fluctuations being the tidal oscillations and the mean shear flow provided by the largest convective eddies. We assume that energy is locally transferred from the tides to the convective flow. Using this assumption, we obtain values for the tidal $Q$ factor of Jupiter and Saturn and for the circularization periods of PMS binaries in good agreement with observations. The timescales obtained with the equilibrium tide approximation are however still 40 times too large to account for the circularization periods of late-type binaries. For these systems, shear in the tachocline or at the base of the convective zone may be the main cause of tidal dissipation.
The study of chemical abundances in stars with planets is an important ingredient for the models of formation and evolution of planetary systems. In order to determine accurate abundances, it is crucial to have a reliable set of atmospheric parameters. In this work, we describe the homogeneous determination of effective temperatures, surface gravities and iron abundances for a large sample of stars with planets as well as a control sample of stars without giant planets. Our results indicate that the metallicity distribution of the stars with planets is more metal rich by ~ 0.13 dex than the control sample stars.
Within the NaCo-ISPY exoplanet imaging program, we aim at detecting and characterizing the population of low-mass companions at wide separations ($gtrsim$10AU), focusing in particular on young stars either hosting a known protoplanetary disk or a debris disk. R CrA is one of the youngest (1-3 Myr) and most promising objects in our sample because of two previous studies that suggested the presence of a close companion. Our aim is to directly image and characterize the companion for the first time. We observed R CrA twice with the NaCo instrument at VLT in the $L$ filter with a one year time baseline in between. The high-contrast imaging data were reduced and analyzed, and in both datasets the companion candidate was detected. The companion is detected at a separation of $196.8pm4.5$/$196.6pm5.9$ mas ($18.7pm1.3$/$18.7pm1.4$ AU) and position angle of $134.7pm0.5^circ/133.7pm0.7^circ$ in the first/second epoch observation. We measure a contrast of $7.29pm0.18$/$6.70pm0.15$ mag with respect to the primary. Stellar proper motion study rejects the hypothesis of the signal being a background object. The companion candidate orbits in the clockwise direction and, if on a face-on circular orbit, its period is $sim43-47$ yr. This value disagrees with the estimated orbital motion and therefore a face-on circular orbit may be excluded. Depending on the assumed age, extinction and brightness of the primary, the stellar companion has a mass between $0.10pm0.02, M_odot$ and $1.03^{+0.20}_{-0.18},M_odot$ range, if no contribution from circumsecondary material is taken into account. The presence of the companion needs to be taken into account when analyzing the complex circumstellar environment of R CrA.
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