Forming short period sub-stellar companions in 47 Tucanae - II. Analytical expressions for the orbital evolution of planets in dense environments

Short period, massive planets, known as hot Jupiters (HJs), have been discovered around ∼1 per cent of local field stars. The inward migration necessary to produce HJs may be ‘low eccentricity’, due to torques in the primordial disc, or ‘high eccentricity’ (HEM). The latter involves exciting high orbital eccentricity, allowing sufficiently close passages with the host star to raise circularizing tides in the planet. We present an analytical framework for quantifying the role of dynamical encounters in high density environments during HEM. We show that encounters can enhance or suppress HEM, depending on the local stellar density and the initial semimajor axis a0. For moderate densities, external perturbations can excite large eccentricities that allow a planet to circularize over the stellar lifetime. At extremely high densities, these perturbations can instead result in tidal disruption of the planet, thus yielding no HJ. This may explain the apparent excess of HJs in M67 compared with their local field star abundance versus their apparent deficit in 47 Tuc. Applying our analytical framework, we demonstrate that for an initial massive planet population similar to the field, the expected HJ occurrence rate in 47 Tuc is fHJ = 2.2 × 10−3, which remains consistent with present constraints. Future large (sample sizes ≳105) or sensitive transit surveys of stars in globular clusters are required to refute the hypothesis that the initial planet population is similar to the solar neighbourhood average. Non-detection in such surveys would have broad consequences for planet formation theory, implying planet formation rates in globular clusters must be suppressed across a wide range of a0.</p

Stellar multiplicity affects the correlation between protoplanetary disc masses and accretion rates: binaries explain high accretors in Upper Sco

In recent years, a correlation between mass accretion rates onto new-born stars and their protoplanetary disc masses was detected in nearby young star-forming regions. Although such a correlation can be interpreted as due to viscous-diffusion processes in the disc, highly accreting sources with low disc masses in more evolved regions remain puzzling. In this paper, we hypothesize that the presence of a stellar companion truncating the disc can explain these outliers. First, we searched the literature for information on stellar multiplicity in Lupus, Chamaeleon I, and Upper Sco, finding that roughly 20 per cent of the discs involved in the correlation are in binaries or higher order multiple stellar systems. We prove with high statistical significance that at any disc mass these sources have systematically higher accretion rates than those in single-stars, with the bulk of the binary population being clustered around Mdisc/ ˙Macc≈0.1Myr⁠. We then run coupled gas and dust one-dimensional evolutionary models of tidally truncated discs to be compared with the data. We find that these models are able to reproduce well most of the population of observed discs in Lupus and Upper Sco, even though the unknown eccentricity of each binary prevents an object by object comparison. In the latter region, the agreement improves if the grain coagulation efficiency is reduced, as may be expected in discs around close binaries. Finally, we mention that thermal winds and sub-structures can be important in explaining few outlying sources.</p

Superresolution trends in the ALMA Taurus survey: structured inner discs and compact discs

The 1.33-mm survey of protoplanetary discs in the Taurus molecular cloud found annular gaps and rings to be common in extended sources (≥ 55au), when their 1D visibility distributions were fit parametrically. We first demonstrate the advantages and limitations of non-parametric visibility fits for data at the survey's 0.12-arcsec resolution. Then we use the non-parametric model in Frankenstein (frank) to identify new substructure in three compact and seven extended sources. Among the new features, we identify three trends: a higher occurrence rate of substructure in the survey's compact discs than previously seen, underresolved (potentially azimuthally asymmetric) substructure in the innermost disc of extended sources, and a 'shoulder' on the trailing edge of a ring in discs with strong depletion at small radii. Noting the shoulder morphology is present in multiple discs observed at higher resolution, we postulate it is tracing a common physical mechanism. We further demonstrate how a superresolution frank brightness profile is useful in motivating an accurate parametric model, using the highly structured source DL Tau in which frank finds two new rings. Finally, we show that sparse (u, v) plane sampling may be masking the presence of substructure in several additional compact survey sources

Inward and outward migration of massive planets: moving towards a stalling radius

Recent studies on the planet-dominated regime of Type II migration showed that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, massive planets can migrate outwards. Using ‘fixed-planet’ simulations, these studies found a correlation between the sign of the torques acting on the planet and the parameter K′ (which describes the depth of the gap carved by the planet in the disc). We perform ‘live-planet’ simulations exploring a range of K′ and disc mass values to test and extend these results. The excitation of planet eccentricity in live-planet simulations breaks the direct dependence of migration rate (rate of change of semimajor axis) on the torques imposed, an effect that ‘fixed-planet’ simulations cannot treat. By disentangling the contribution to the torque due to the semimajor axis evolution from that due to the eccentricity evolution, we recover the relation between the magnitude and sign of migration and K′ and argue that this relation may be better expressed in terms of the related gap depth parameter K. We present a toy model in which the sign of planetary migration changes at a limiting value of K, through which we explore planets’ migration in viscously evolving discs. The existence of the torque reversal shapes the planetary system’s architecture by accumulating planets either at the stalling radius or in a band around it (defined by the interplay between the planet migration and the disc evolution). In either case, planets pile up in the area 1–10 au, disfavouring hot Jupiter formation through Type II migration in the planet-dominated regime.</p

Modeling JWST MIRI-MRS Observations of T Cha: Mid-IR Noble Gas Emission Tracing a Dense Disk Wind

[Ne ii] 12.81 μm emission is a well-used tracer of protoplanetary disk winds due to its blueshifted line profile. Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI)-Medium Resolution Spectrometer (MRS) recently observed T Cha, detecting this line along with lines of [Ne iii], [Ar ii], and [Ar iii], with the [Ne ii] and [Ne iii] lines found to be extended while the [Ar ii] was not. In this complementary work, we use these lines to address long-debated questions about protoplanetary disk winds regarding their mass-loss rate, the origin of their ionization, and the role of magnetically driven winds as opposed to photoevaporation. To this end, we perform photoionization radiative transfer on simple hydrodynamic wind models to map the line emission. We compare the integrated model luminosities to those observed with MIRI-MRS to identify which models most closely reproduce the data and produce synthetic images from these to understand what information is captured by measurements of the line extents. Along with the low degree of ionization implied by the line ratios, the relative compactness of [Ar ii] compared to [Ne ii] is particularly constraining. This requires Ne ii production by hard X-rays and Ar ii production by soft X-rays (and/or EUV) in an extended (≳10 au) wind that is shielded from soft X-rays, necessitating a dense wind with material launched on scales down to ∼1 au. Such conditions could be produced by photoevaporation, whereas an extended magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) wind producing equal shielding would likely underpredict the line fluxes. However, a tenuous inner MHD wind may still contribute to shielding the extended wind. This picture is consistent with constraints from spectrally resolved line profiles.</p