Formation, Survival, and Detectability of Planets Beyond 100 AU

Details Formation, Survival, and Detectability of Planets Beyond 100 AU Formation, Survival, and Detectability of Planets Beyond 100 AU

2009-02-16

arxiv.org/abs/0902.2779v1

Astrophys.J.696:1600-1611,2009

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

13 pages (emulateapj format), 10 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

Scientific paper

10.1088/0004-637X/696/2/1600

Direct imaging searches have begun to detect planetary and brown dwarf companions and to place constraints on the presence of giant planets at large separations from their host star. This work helps to motivate such planet searches by predicting a population of young giant planets that could be detectable by direct imaging campaigns. Both the classical core accretion and the gravitational instability model for planet formation are hard-pressed to form long-period planets in situ. Here, we show that dynamical instabilities among planetary systems that originally formed multiple giant planets much closer to the host star could produce a population of giant planets at large (~100 AU - 100000 AU) separations. We estimate the limits within which these planets may survive, quantify the efficiency of gravitational scattering into both stable and unstable wide orbits, and demonstrate that population analyses must take into account the age of the system. We predict that planet scattering creates a population of detectable giant planets on wide orbits that decreases in number on timescales of ~10 Myr. We demonstrate that several members of such populations should be detectable with current technology, quantify the prospects for future instruments, and suggest how they could place interesting constraints on planet formation models.

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