Tidal and Magnetic Interactions between a Hot Jupiter and its Host Star in the Magnetospheric Cavity of a Protoplanetary Disk

TL;DR

This study models the orbital evolution of young hot Jupiters within a magnetospheric cavity, considering tidal and magnetic interactions, to explain observed distributions of close-in giant planets.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified model that incorporates disk locking, tidal, and magnetic effects to analyze how hot Jupiters migrate and lose mass inside magnetospheric cavities.

Findings

Massive planets (>1 Jupiter mass) can migrate close to the star within 10^7 years in large cavities.

Lower-mass planets (<1 Jupiter mass) cannot reach close-in orbits in large cavities.

All planets lose their gas in small cavities, regardless of initial eccentricity.

Abstract

We present a simplified model to study the orbital evolution of a young hot Jupiter inside the magnetospheric cavity of a proto-planetary disk. The model takes into account the disk locking of stellar spin as well as the tidal and magnetic interactions between the star and the planet. We focus on the orbital evolution starting from the orbit in the 2:1 resonance with the inner edge of the disk, followed by the inward and then outward orbital migration driven by the tidal and magnetic torques as well as the Roche-lobe overflow of the tidally inflated planet. The goal in this paper is to study how the orbital evolution inside the magnetospheric cavity depends on the cavity size, planet mass, and orbital eccentricity. In the present work, we only target the mass range from 0.7 to 2 Jupiter masses. In the case of the large cavity corresponding to the rotational period ~ 7 days, the planet of mass >1 Jupiter mass with moderate initial eccentricities (>~ 0.3) can move to the region < 0.03 AU from its central star in 10^7 years, while the planet of mass <1 Jupiter mass cannot. We estimate the critical eccentricity beyond which the planet of a given mass will overflow its Roche radius and finally lose all of its gas onto the star due to runaway mass loss. In the case of the small cavity corresponding to the rotational period ~ 3 days, all of the simulated planets lose all of their gas even in circular orbits. Our results for the orbital evolution of young hot Jupiters may have the potential to explain the absence of low-mass giant planets inside ~ 0.03 AU from their dwarf stars revealed by transit surveys.