Forming short period sub-stellar companions in 47 Tucanae -- II. Analytic expressions for the orbital evolution of planets in dense environments

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytic model to understand how dynamical encounters in dense stellar environments influence the formation and survival of hot Jupiters, explaining their observed distribution in clusters like 47 Tucanae.

Contribution

It introduces a new analytic framework to quantify the impact of stellar encounters on high eccentricity migration of planets in dense environments.

Findings

Encounters can both promote and inhibit hot Jupiter formation depending on stellar density.

Predicted hot Jupiter occurrence rate in 47 Tuc is consistent with current observations.

High-density environments can lead to tidal disruption, reducing hot Jupiter formation.

Abstract

Short period, massive planets, known as hot Jupiters (HJs), have been discovered around $\sim 1$ percent of local field stars. The inward migration necessary to produce HJs may be `low eccentricity', due to torques in the primordial disc, or `high eccentricity' (HEM). The latter involves exciting high orbital eccentricity, allowing sufficiently close passages with the host star to raise circularising tides in the planet. We present an analytic framework for quantifying the role of dynamical encounters in high density environments during HEM. We show that encounters can enhance or suppress HEM, depending on the local stellar density and the initial semi-major axis $a_0$. For moderate densities, external perturbations can excite large eccentricities that allow a planet to circularise over the stellar lifetime. At extremely high densities, these perturbations can instead result in tidal disruption of the planet, thus yielding no HJ. This may explain the apparent excess of HJs in M67 compared with their local field star abundance versus their apparent deficit in 47 Tuc. Applying our analytic framework, we demonstrate that for an initial massive planet population similar to the field, the expected HJ occurrence rate in 47 Tuc is $f_\mathrm{HJ}=2.2\times 10^{-3}$, which remains consistent with present constraints. Future large (sample sizes $\gtrsim 10^5$) or sensitive transit surveys of stars in globular clusters are required to refute the hypothesis that the initial planet population is similar to the solar neighbourhood average. Non-detection in such surveys would have broad consequences for planet formation theory, implying planet formation rates in globular clusters must be suppressed across a wide range of $a_0$.