RV-detected planets around M dwarfs: Challenges for core accretion models
Authors: Martin Schlecker, Remo Burn, Silvia Sabotta, Antonia Seifert, Thomas Henning, Alexandre Emsenhuber, Christoph Mordasini, Sabine Reffert, Yutong Shan, Hubert Klahr
AI-generated Key Points
- The article explores the formation of planets around low-mass stars
- Investigates whether known scaling laws can explain observed population of planets or if separate formation channels are required
- State-of-the-art planet population synthesis model is used to test hypothesis
- Simulations reveal that rocky planets around M dwarfs occur at a high frequency and generally agree with their planetary mass function
- Cannot reproduce a population of giant planets around stars less massive than 0.5 solar masses, suggesting an alternative formation channel for these planets
- Stellar mass dependency in the detection rate of short-period planets, indicating dissimilar planet migration barriers in disks of different spectral subtypes
- Lack of close-in planets around earlier-type stars ($M_\star \gtrsim 0.4\, M_\odot$) remains unexplained by their model
- Importance of considering differences in conditions around young stars of different spectral subtypes when studying planet formation
- Gaps in our understanding of planet migration in nascent M dwarf systems need further investigation to fully comprehend how these celestial bodies form
Abstract: Planet formation is sensitive to the conditions in protoplanetary disks, for which scaling laws as a function of stellar mass are known. We aim to test whether the observed population of planets around low-mass stars can be explained by these trends, or if separate formation channels are needed. We address this question by confronting a state-of-the-art planet population synthesis model with a sample of planets around M dwarfs observed by the HARPS and CARMENES radial velocity (RV) surveys. To account for detection biases, we performed injection and retrieval experiments on the actual RV data to produce synthetic observations of planets that we simulated following the core accretion paradigm. These simulations robustly yield the previously reported high occurrence of rocky planets around M dwarfs and generally agree with their planetary mass function. In contrast, our simulations cannot reproduce a population of giant planets around stars less massive than 0.5 solar masses. This potentially indicates an alternative formation channel for giant planets around the least massive stars that cannot be explained with current core accretion theories. We further find a stellar mass dependency in the detection rate of short-period planets. A lack of close-in planets around the earlier-type stars ($M_\star \gtrsim 0.4\, M_\odot$) in our sample remains unexplained by our model and indicates dissimilar planet migration barriers in disks of different spectral subtypes. Both discrepancies can be attributed to gaps in our understanding of planet migration in nascent M dwarf systems. They underline the different conditions around young stars of different spectral subtypes, and the importance of taking these differences into account when studying planet formation.
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