Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-22-2020

Publication Title

The Astrophysical Journal

Volume

895

Issue

48

First page number:

1

Last page number:

12

Abstract

The high occurrence rates of spiral arms and large central clearings in protoplanetary disks, if interpreted as signposts of giant planets, indicate that gas giants commonly form as companions to young stars (Myr) at orbital separations of 10–300 au. However, attempts to directly image this giant planet population as companions to more mature stars (>10 Myr) have yielded few successes. This discrepancy could be explained if most giant planets form by "cold start," i.e., by radiating away much of their formation energy as they assemble their mass, rendering them faint enough to elude detection at later times. In that case, giant planets should be bright at early times, during their accretion phase, and yet forming planets are detected only rarely through direct imaging techniques. Here we explore the possibility that the low detection rate of accreting planets is the result of episodic accretion through a circumplanetary disk. We also explore the possibility that the companion orbiting the Herbig Ae star HD 142527 may be a giant planet undergoing such an accretion outburst.

Keywords

Herbig Ae/Be stars; Circumstellar disks; Planet formation; Protoplanetary disks; Exoplanet detection methods; Exoplanet astronomy

Disciplines

External Galaxies | Instrumentation | Stars, Interstellar Medium and the Galaxy

File Format

pdf

File Size

909 KB

Language

English

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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