Can Large-Scale Migration Explain the Giant Planet Occurrence Rate?

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether large-scale planetary migration can explain the increasing occurrence rate of giant planets with orbital period, highlighting the role of gap opening and mass distribution in migration dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a model combining core migration, gas accretion, and gap opening to explain observed giant planet distributions, challenging previous migration theories.

Findings

Radial transport slows significantly after gap opening.

Mass gradients needed to match observations are too steep for low-eccentricity planets.

Gap opening flattens the orbital period distribution, affecting migration outcomes.

Abstract

The giant planet occurrence rate rises with orbital period out to at least $\sim$300 days. Large-scale planetary migration through the disk has long been suspected to be the physical origin of this feature, as the timescale of standard Type I migration in a standard solar nebula is longer farther from the star. These calculations also find that typical Jupiter-bearing cores shuttle towards the disk inner edge on timescales orders of magnitude shorter than the gas disk lifetime. The presence of gas giants at myriad distances requires mechanisms to slow large-scale migration. We revisit the migration paradigm by deriving model occurrence rate profiles from migration of cores, mass growth by gas accretion, and planetary gap opening. We show explicitly that the former two processes occur in tandem. Radial transport of planets can slow down significantly once deep gaps are carved out by their interaction with disk gas. Disks are more easily perturbed closer to the star, so accounting for gap opening flattens the final orbital period distribution. To recover the observed rise in occurrence rate, gas giants need to be more massive farther out, which is naturally achieved if their envelopes are dust-free. The range of mass gradients we find to reconcile the observed occurrence rate of Jupiters is too abrupt to account for the mass-period distribution of low-eccentricity giant planets, challenging disk migration as the dominant origin channel of hot and warm Jupiters. Future efforts in characterizing the unbiased mass distribution will place stronger constraints on predictions from migration theory.