# The origin of the occurrence rate profile of gas giants inside 100 days

## TL;DR

This study explores the origins of the period distribution of gas giants within 300 days, suggesting they likely form at specific locations like snowlines rather than randomly.

## Contribution

It introduces a bimodal planet formation model based on snowlines that better explains the observed distribution of gas giants compared to a linear seed distribution.

## Key findings

- Bimodal snowline-based model fits data better than linear seed distribution.
- Water snowline's efficiency at planet formation is likely 3-10 times lower than previously assumed.
- Planets tend to form at specific locations, such as snowlines, rather than randomly.

## Abstract

We investigate the origin of the period distribution of giant planets. We fit the bias-corrected distribution of gas-giant planets inside 300 days found by Santerne et al. (2016) using a planet formation model based on pebble accretion. We investigate two possible initial conditions: a linear distribution of planetary seeds, and seeds injected exclusively on the water and CO icelines. Our simulations exclude the linear initial distribution of seeds with a high degree of confidence. Our bimodal model based on snowlines give a more reasonable fit to the data, with the discrepancies reducing significantly if we assume the water snowline to be a factor 3-10 less efficient at producing planets. This model moreover performs better on both the warm/hot Jupiters ratio and a Gaussian mixture model as comparison criteria. Our results hint that the gas-giant exoplanets population inside 300 days is more compatible with planets forming preferentially at special locations.