1 research outputs found
On the behaviour of spin-orbit connection of exoplanets
Star-planet interactions play, among other things, a crucial role in
planetary orbital configurations by circularizing orbits, aligning the star and
planet spin and synchronizing stellar rotation with orbital motions. This is
especially true for innermost giant planets, which can be schematized as binary
systems with a very large mass ratio. Despite a few examples where spin-orbit
synchronization has been obtained, there is no demographic study on synchronous
regimes in those systems yet. Here we use a sample of 1,055 stars with
innermost planet companions to show the existence of three observational loci
of star-planet synchronization regimes. Two of them have dominant fractions of
subsynchronous and supersynchronous star-planet systems, and a third less
populated regime of potentially synchronized systems. No synchronous
star-planet system with a period higher than 40 days has been detected yet.
This landscape is different from eclipsing binary systems, most of which are
synchronized. We suggest that planets in a stable asynchronous spin state
belonging to star-planet systems in a supersynchronized regime offer the most
favourable conditions for habitability.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure in main paper, 6 supplementary figures. Published
in Nature Astronomy, May 202