On the correlation between metallicity and the presence of giant planets

Abstract

The correlation between stellar metallicity and the presence of giant planets is well established. It has been tentatively explained by the possible increase of planet formation probability in stellar disks with enhanced amount of metals. However, there are two caveats to this explanation. First, giant stars with planets do not show a metallicity distribution skewed towards metal-rich objects, as found for dwarfs. Second, the correlation with metallicity is not valid at intermediate metallicities, for which it can be shown that giant planets are preferentially found orbiting thick disk stars. None of these two peculiarities is explained by the proposed scenarios of giant planet formation. We contend that they are galactic in nature, and probably not linked to the formation process of giant planets. It is suggested that the same dynamical effect, namely the migration of stars in the galactic disk, is at the origin of both features, with the important consequence that most metal-rich stars hosting giant planets originate from the inner disk, a property that has been largely neglected until now. We illustrate that a planet-metallicity correlation similar to the observed one is easily obtained if stars from the inner disk have a higher percentage of giant planets than stars born at the solar radius, with no specific dependence on metallicity. We propose that the density of molecular hydrogen in the inner galactic disk (the molecular ring) could play a role in setting the high percentage of giant planets that originate from this region.Comment: Accepted in ApJ