Other
Scientific paper
Sep 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011ess.....2.1304c&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, ESS meeting #2, #13.04
Other
Scientific paper
We examine two key consequences of tidal forces on the transiting planet observed and theoretical properties.
First, based on consistent calculations coupling gravothermal evolution with complete tidal equations, we revisit the viability of the tidal heating hypothesis to explain the anomalously large radius of some transiting planets. We demonstrate, both analytically and numerically, that calculations based on tidal models truncated at second order in eccentricity, as done in all previous studies, lead to severely erroneous tidal evolutions. Such truncated calculations yield characteristic timescales for dynamical evolution that can be wrong by orders of magnitude, leading accordingly to completely erroneous tidal energy dissipation rates during the planet's evolution. We demontrate that these results do not stem from uncertainties in the tidal quality factor, as often (erroneously) suggested, but from the exact calculations of the tidal equations. We show that, although tidal heating provides a substantial contribution to the planet's heat budget, this mechanism can not explain alone all the anomalously inflated planets. We examine alternative mechanisms to explain these puzzling properties.
Furthermore, due to strong tidal forces, transiting planets exhibit a non-spherical shape. Such a departure from sphericity has a measurable impact on the observed transit depth and leads to a bias in the derivation of the transit radius from the light curve. As the tidally deformed planet projects its smallest cross section area during the transit, the measured effective radius is smaller than the one of the unperturbed genuine spherical planet. To correct this bias, we present analytical expressions that can easily be used to calculate the shape of observed planets (and Love number) and its impact on the transit lightcurve. These expressions enable us to convert the planet’s measured cross section into its real equilibrium radius, the one to be used when comparing measurements with theoretical models.
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