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1. Origins of Hot Jupiters from the Stellar Obliquity Distribution

   https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac502d  

   Rice, Malena ; Wang, Songhu ; Laughlin, Gregory ( February 2022 , The Astrophysical Journal Letters)

   The obliquity of a star, or the angle between its spin axis and the average orbit normal of its companion planets, provides a unique constraint on that system’s evolutionary history. Unlike the solar system, where the Sun’s equator is nearly aligned with its companion planets, many hot-Jupiter systems have been discovered with large spin–orbit misalignments, hosting planets on polar or retrograde orbits. We demonstrate that, in contrast to stars harboring hot Jupiters on circular orbits, those with eccentric companions follow no population-wide obliquity trend with stellar temperature. This finding can be naturally explained through a combination of high-eccentricity migration and tidal damping. Furthermore, we show that the joint obliquity and eccentricity distributions observed today are consistent with the outcomes of high-eccentricity migration, with no strict requirement to invoke the other hot-Jupiter formation mechanisms of disk migration or in situ formation. At a population-wide level, high-eccentricity migration can consistently shape the dynamical evolution of hot-Jupiter systems.
2. Tidal Evolution and Diffusive Growth During High-eccentricity Planet Migration: Revisiting the Eccentricity Distribution of Hot Jupiters

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac5627  

   Yu, Hang ; Weinberg, Nevin N. ; Arras, Phil ( April 2022 , The Astrophysical Journal)

   High-eccentricity tidal migration is a potential formation channel for hot Jupiters. During this process, the planetary f-mode may experience a phase of diffusive growth, allowing its energy to quickly build up to large values. In Yu et al., we demonstrated that nonlinear mode interactions between a parent f-mode and daughter f- and p-modes expand the parameter space over which the diffusive growth of the parent is triggered. We extend that study by incorporating (1) the angular momentum transfer between the orbit and the mode, and consequently the evolution of the pericenter distance; (2) a prescription to regulate the nonlinear frequency shift at high parent mode energies; and (3) dissipation of the parent’s energy due to both turbulent convective damping of the daughter modes and strongly nonlinear wave-breaking events. The new ingredients allow us to follow the coupled evolution of the mode and orbit over ≳10⁴yr, covering the diffusive evolution from its onset to its termination. We find that the semimajor axis shrinks by a factor of nearly 10 over 10⁴yr, corresponding to a tidal quality factor$\mathit{}\sim 10$. The f-mode’s diffusive growth terminates while the eccentricity is still high, at arounde= 0.8–0.95. Using these results, we revisitmore »the eccentricity distribution of proto-hot Jupiters. We estimate that less than 1 proto-HJ with eccentricity >0.9 should be expected in Kepler's data once the diffusive regime is accounted for, explaining the observed paucity of this population.

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3. Evidence for the Late Arrival of Hot Jupiters in Systems with High Host-star Obliquities

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ac69ef  

   Hamer, Jacob H. ; Schlaufman, Kevin C. ( June 2022 , The Astronomical Journal)

   It has been shown that hot Jupiters systems with massive, hot stellar primaries exhibit a wide range of stellar obliquities. On the other hand, hot Jupiter systems with low-mass, cool primaries often have stellar obliquities close to zero. Efficient tidal interactions between hot Jupiters and the convective envelopes present in lower-mass main-sequence stars have been a popular explanation for these observations. If this explanation is accurate, then aligned systems should be older than misaligned systems. Likewise, the convective envelope mass of a hot Jupiter’s host star should be an effective predictor of its obliquity. We derive homogeneous stellar parameters—including convective envelope masses—for hot Jupiter host stars with high-quality sky-projected obliquity inferences. Using a thin-disk stellar population’s Galactic velocity dispersion as a relative age proxy, we find that hot Jupiter host stars with larger-than-median obliquities are older than hot Jupiter host stars with smaller-than-median obliquities. The relative age difference between the two populations is larger for hot Jupiter host stars with smaller-than-median fractional convective envelope masses and is significant at the 3.6σlevel. We identify stellar mass, not convective envelope mass, as the best predictor of stellar obliquity in hot Jupiter systems. The best explanation for these observations is that manymore »hot Jupiters in misaligned systems arrived in the close proximity of their host stars long after their parent protoplanetary disks dissipated. The dependence of observed age offset on convective envelope mass suggests that tidal realignment contributes to the population of aligned hot Jupiters orbiting stars with convective envelopes.

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4. The Aligned Orbit of WASP-148b, the Only Known Hot Jupiter with a nearby Warm Jupiter Companion, from NEID and HIRES

   https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac4f44  

   Wang, Xian-Yu ; Rice, Malena ; Wang, Songhu ; Pu, Bonan ; Stefánsson, Gudmundur ; Mahadevan, Suvrath ; Radzom, Brandon ; Giacalone, Steven ; Wu, Zhen-Yu ; Esposito, Thomas M. ; et al ( February 2022 , The Astrophysical Journal Letters)

   Abstract We present spectroscopic measurements of the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect for WASP-148b, the only known hot Jupiter with a nearby warm-Jupiter companion, from the WIYN/NEID and Keck/HIRES instruments. This is one of the first scientific results reported from the newly commissioned NEID spectrograph, as well as the second obliquity constraint for a hot Jupiter system with a close-in companion, after WASP-47. WASP-148b is consistent with being in alignment with the sky-projected spin axis of the host star, with λ = − 8 .° 2 − 9 .° 7 + 8 .° 7 . The low obliquity observed in the WASP-148 system is consistent with the orderly-alignment configuration of most compact multi-planet systems around cool stars with obliquity constraints, including our solar system, and may point to an early history for these well-organized systems in which migration and accretion occurred in isolation, with relatively little disturbance. By contrast, previous results have indicated that high-mass and hot stars appear to more commonly host a wide range of misaligned planets: not only single hot Jupiters, but also compact systems with multiple super-Earths. We suggest that, to account for the high rate of spin–orbit misalignments in both compact multi-planet and isolated-hot-Jupiter systems orbiting high-mass andmore »hot stars, spin–orbit misalignments may be caused by distant giant planet perturbers, which are most common around these stellar types.« less
5. A Tendency Toward Alignment in Single-star Warm-Jupiter Systems

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ac8153  

   Rice, Malena ; Wang, Songhu ; Wang, Xian-Yu ; Stefánsson, Guđmundur ; Isaacson, Howard ; Howard, Andrew W. ; Logsdon, Sarah E. ; Schweiker, Heidi ; Dai, Fei ; Brinkman, Casey ; et al ( August 2022 , The Astronomical Journal)

   The distribution of spin–orbit angles for systems with wide-separation, tidally detached exoplanets offers a unique constraint on the prevalence of dynamically violent planetary evolution histories. Tidally detached planets provide a relatively unbiased view of the primordial stellar obliquity distribution, as they cannot tidally realign within the system lifetime. We present the third result from our Stellar Obliquities in Long-period Exoplanet Systems (SOLES) survey: a measurement of the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect across two transits of the tidally detached warm Jupiter TOI-1478 b with the WIYN/NEID and Keck/HIRES spectrographs, revealing a sky-projected spin–orbit angle$\lambda ={6.2}_{-5.5}^{+5.9}°$. Combining this new measurement with the full set of archival obliquity measurements, including two previous constraints from the SOLES survey, we demonstrate that, in single-star systems, tidally detached warm Jupiters are preferentially more aligned than closer-orbiting hot Jupiters. This finding has two key implications: (1) planets in single-star systems tend to form within aligned protoplanetary disks, and (2) warm Jupiters form more quiescently than hot Jupiters, which, in single-star systems, are likely perturbed into a misaligned state through planet–planet interactions in the post-disk-dispersal phase. We also find that lower-mass Saturns span a wide range of spin–orbit angles, suggesting a prevalence of planet–planet scattering and/or secularmore »mechanisms in these systems.

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