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)

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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

Radial Velocity DataTo Yield Mass

Transit DataTo Yield Radius

Fortney, Baraffe, & Militzer (2010)

Our Gas Giant Prototypes: Jupiter and Saturn

5-25% Heavy Elements by Mass

At Gyr ages, ~1.3 RJ is the largest radius of a standard cooling model

Fortney et al. (2007)

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)

Explaining Large Radii

An area of active research!

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), in press

There is an emerging population of planets with no radius anomaly

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

Borucki et al. (2011) Analysis: 2-3 RE Most Common Size

•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: Picking out the Planets

Kepler-11: Lightcurves and Transit Times

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