investigating the structure of transiting planets, from hot jupiters to kepler super earths jonathan...
TRANSCRIPT
Investigating the structure of transiting planets, from hot Jupiters to Kepler super Earths
Jonathan FortneyUniversity of California, Santa Cruz
Thanks to: Neil Miller (UCSC) , Eric Lopez (UCSC) Eliza Miller-Ricci Kempton (UCSC), Nadine Nettelmann (U. of Rostock)
Transiting Planets,Large and Small
115 planets have now been seen to transit their parent stars, with measured masses
104 “hot Jupiters” 5 “hot Neptunes” 6 “super Earths”
Combination of planet radius and mass yield density --> composition
Strong bias towards finding mass/large planets on short-period orbits July 2007
Fortney, Baraffe, & Militzer (2010)
Our Gas Giant Prototypes: Jupiter and Saturn
5-25% Heavy Elements by Mass
Late 2006
We can also characterize these planets, not just find them
There is an incredibly diversity of worlds
The shear number of discoveries opens up the prospect of understanding gas giants (Jupiter-like), ice giants (Neptune-like) and lower mass planets as classes of astrophysical objects
Building a Model: Additional Interior Power
1 MJ planet with a 10 ME core, at 0.05 AU from the Sun
Miller, Fortney, & Jackson (2009)
Beyond Radius Inflation: What are We Trying to Learn?
•We’d like to understand giant planets as a class of astrophysical objects
•What are their unifying properties?
Miller & Fortney (2011), submitted
A strong correlation between star and planet abundances
See also, Guillot et al. (2006)
Miller & Fortney (2011), in press
A quasi-uniform super-solar enrichment above 0.5 MJ
[Fe/H]<0.00.0≤[Fe/H]<0.20.2≤[Fe/H]<0.4
Implications for Giant Planets
•Giant planets, as a class, are enriched in heavy elements• Enriched compared to the Sun• Enriched compared to their parent stars• Enrichment is a strong inverse function of mass, but with an
apparent “floor” at high mass
•Massive planets and low-mass brown dwarfs should have structural and atmospheric abundance differences
•The heavy element mass of an inflated planet could be estimated only from the planet’s mass and stellar metallicity• With that in hand, its additional
interior power could be constrained• Radius inflation mechanism can be
studied vs. orbital separation and planet mass
Batygin et al. (2011)
Potential Future Investigations
• Heavy element mass vs. stellar [Si/H], [O/H], [C/H]• Could be used to understand the composition of the materials
that make up the heavy element masses• These compositions not well constrained in the solar system
• Heavy element mass vs. for well-aligned and mis-aligned system• Could show the influence of environment and dynamical history
on the accretion of heavy elements
Gaudi & Winn (2006)
We can also characterize these planets, not just find them
There is an incredibly diversity of worlds
The Kepler Mission
• Monitoring 150,000 stars for 3.5+ years• 20 months into the mission• First 4 months is now public• 1200+ transiting planet candidates• d < 0.25 AU
Howard et al. (2011) Analysis: 2-3 RE Most Common Size
Analysis of first 4 months of data---much more still to come
•The most densely-packed planetary system yet found
•5 planets within the orbit of Mercury
•Masses obtained only from Transit Timing Variations, with no Stellar RV
•Relatively low density for all planets implies thick H/He atmospheres
Kepler-11
Kepler-11: The Mass-Radius View
• Modeled as rock-iron cores with water or H/He envelopes• Atmospheric escape with time is ignored
GJ 1214b
Atmospheric Gain and Loss
Jackson et al. (2010)
Alibert et al. (2005)
CoRoT-7b
• In the Kepler-11 system, significantly more massive planets can be ruled out from stability considerations, particularly for the inner 2 planets
Conclusions
• A batch of new discoveries show that “mini-Neptunes” are a very common type of planet• The processes that affect H2-dominated atmosphere gain/escape should be investigated in much more detail• The Kepler-11 system is a natural laboratory to study
atmospheric mass loss•Planet types keep emerging that we have no analog for in the solar system
• We can now begin to understand the structure of giant planets with lower-irradiation transiting planets• Kepler has already found a larger sample of these types of
planets, but follow-up observations for masses must be done