Parent Stars of Extrasolar Planets - XIV. Strong Evidence of Li Abundance Deficit

TL;DR

This study provides strong evidence that stars hosting giant planets have a significant deficiency in lithium abundance compared to similar stars without planets, supporting the idea of planet-related stellar chemical anomalies.

Contribution

It expands the sample of stars analyzed for lithium abundance and confirms the lithium deficit in planet-hosting stars with new high-resolution spectra and literature data.

Findings

Stars with planets show lower Li abundance than similar stars without planets.

The lithium deficit persists across expanded samples and is statistically significant.

Results support a link between planet presence and stellar chemical composition.

Abstract

We report the results of our analysis of new high resolution spectra of 30 late-F to early-G dwarf field stars for the purpose of deriving their Li abundances. They were selected from the subsample of stars in the Valenti and Fischer compilation that are lacking detected planets. These new data serve to expand our comparison sample used to test whether stars with Doppler-detected giant planets display Li abundance anomalies. Our results continue to show that Li is deficient among stars with planets when compared to very similar stars that lack such planets. This conclusion is strengthened when we add literature data to ours in a consistent way. We present a table of stars with planets paired with very similar stars lacking planets, extending the recent similar results of Delgado Mena et al.