Ho, Cynthia SK;
Van Eylen, Vincent;
(2023)
A deep radius valley revealed by Kepler short cadence observations.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
, 519
(2)
pp. 4056-4073.
10.1093/mnras/stac3802.
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Abstract
The characteristics of the radius valley, i.e. an observed lack of planets between 1.5 and 2 Earth radii at periods shorter than about 100 d, provide insights into the formation and evolution of close-in planets. We present a novel view of the radius valley by refitting the transits of 431 planets using Kepler 1-min short cadence observations, the vast majority of which have not been previously analysed in this way. In some cases, the updated planetary parameters differ significantly from previous studies, resulting in a deeper radius valley than previously observed. This suggests that planets are likely to have a more homogeneous core composition at formation. Furthermore, using support vector machines, we find that the radius valley location strongly depends on orbital period and stellar mass and weakly depends on stellar age, with ∂ log Rp,valley /∂ log P = −0.096+0.023 −0.027, ∂ log Rp,valley /∂ log M = 0.231+0.053 −0.064, and ∂ log Rp,valley /∂ log (age) = 0.033+0.017 −0.025. These findings favour thermally driven mass-loss models such as photoevaporation and core-powered mass-loss, with a slight preference for the latter scenario. Finally, this work highlights the value of transit observations with a short photometric cadence to precisely determine planet radii, and we provide an updated list of precisely and homogeneously determined parameters for the planets in our sample.
Type: | Article |
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Title: | A deep radius valley revealed by Kepler short cadence observations |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.1093/mnras/stac3802 |
Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac3802 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Planets and satellites: composition, planets and satellites: formation, planets and satellites: fundamental parameters |
UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Space and Climate Physics |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10163096 |
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