Tidal erasure of stellar obliquities constrains the timing of hot Jupiter formation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how tidal interactions and stellar evolution influence the obliquities of hot Jupiters, providing constraints on their formation timing and the role of stellar properties in obliquity damping.

Contribution

It introduces a theory linking tidal obliquity damping to stellar evolution, constrains hot Jupiter formation timing, and predicts a metallicity-dependent temperature threshold for obliquity alignment.

Findings

Hot Jupiters within 0.02au of misaligned stars must form after tens of millions of years.

Overabundance of near-polar hot Jupiters likely reflects primordial configurations.

Stars hotter than ~6100K tend to have higher obliquities due to less effective tidal damping.

Abstract

Stars with hot Jupiters sometimes have high obliquities, which are possible relics of hot Jupiter formation. Based on the characteristics of systems with and without high obliquities, it is suspected that obliquities are tidally damped when the star has a thick convective envelope, as is the case for main-sequence stars cooler than ~6100K, and the orbit is within ~8 stellar radii. A promising theory for tidal obliquity damping is the dissipation of inertial waves within the star's convective envelope. Here, we consider the implications of this theory for the timing of hot Jupiter formation. Specifically, hot stars that currently lack a convective envelope possess one during their pre-main sequence. We find that hot Jupiters orbiting within a critical distance of ~0.02au from a misaligned main-sequence star lacking a thick convective envelope must have acquired their tight orbits after a few tens of millions of years in order to have retained their obliquities throughout the pre-main-sequence. There are 4 known systems for which this argument applies--XO-3b, Corot-3b, WASP-14b, and WASP-121b--subject to uncertainties surrounding inertial wave dissipation. Moreover, we conclude that a recently-identified overabundance of near-polar hot Jupiters is unlikely sculpted by tides, instead reflecting their primordial configuration. Finally, hot Jupiters arriving around cool stars after a few 100s of millions of years likely find the host star rotating too slowly for efficient obliquity damping. We predict that the critical effective temperature separating aligned and misaligned stars should vary with metallicity, from 6300K to 6000K as [Fe/H] varies from -0.3 to +0.3.