Targeting Young Stars with Kepler: Planet Formation, Migration Mechanisms and the Early History of Planetary Systems

TL;DR

This paper proposes a Kepler mission focused on studying young stars and hot Jupiters to understand planet formation, migration, and early planetary system evolution, significantly increasing known hot Jupiter data.

Contribution

It introduces a repurposed Kepler mission targeting young stars and hot Jupiters to address key questions in planet formation and migration mechanisms.

Findings

Over an order of magnitude increase in known hot Jupiters.

Data enabling transit timing variation and asteroseismology.

Insights into early planetary system evolution and habitability.

Abstract

This white paper discusses a repurposed mission for the Kepler spacecraft that focusses on solving outstanding problems in planet formation and evolution by targeting the study of the hot Jupiter population of young stars. This mission can solve the question of the mode of migration of hot Jupiters, address the problem of whether Jupiters form by hot-start (gravitational instability) or cold-start (core accretion) mechanisms, and provide a wealth of data on the early stages of planetary system evolution during the active phases of stars which impact planetary habitability. In one year of observations of three weeks dwell time per field, Kepler would increase by more than an order of magnitude the number of known hot Jupiters, which can be followed up with fast cadence observations to to search for transit timing variations and to perform asteroseismological characterization of the host stars. This mission scenario continues to operate Kepler in the photometric monitoring mode for which it was designed, and is generally flexible with regards to field selection enabling prioritization of fuel usage and attitude control constraints.