Hot Jupiters are Destroyed by Tides While Their Host Stars are on the Main Sequence

TL;DR

This paper provides evidence that hot Jupiters are gradually destroyed by tidal interactions with their host stars during the stars' main sequence phase, inferred from stellar velocity dispersion data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method using Gaia data to infer the tidal decay of hot Jupiters and estimates the stellar tidal quality factor for solar-type stars.

Findings

Hot Jupiter host stars have lower velocity dispersion, indicating they are younger.

Tidal interactions likely cause hot Jupiters to inspiral and be destroyed during the main sequence.

Estimated stellar tidal quality factor $ ext{Q}_*'$ is less than about 10^7.

Abstract

While cooler giant planets are often observed with non-zero eccentricities, the short-period circular orbits of hot Jupiters suggest that they lose orbital energy and angular momentum due to tidal interactions with their host stars. However, orbital decay has never been unambiguously observed. We use data from Gaia Data Release 2 to show that hot Jupiter host stars have a smaller Galactic velocity dispersion than a similar population of stars without hot Jupiters. Since Galactic velocity dispersion is correlated with age, this observation implies that the population of hot Jupiter host stars is on average younger than the field population. The best explanation for this inference is that tidal interactions cause hot Jupiters to inspiral while their host stars are on the main sequence. This observation requires that the typical modified stellar tidal quality factor $Q_{\ast}^{'}$ for solar-type stars be in the range $\log_{10}{Q_{\ast}^{'}} \lesssim 7$.