Disc fragmentation. II. Ejection of low mass Free Floating Planets from growing binary systems

TL;DR

This paper explores how disc fragmentation in binary systems can eject low-mass free-floating planets, suggesting that such planets may form through gravitational instability in protoplanetary discs, supported by simulation results.

Contribution

It demonstrates that disc fragmentation can efficiently eject low-mass planets, providing a new explanation for the origin of free-floating planets observed by microlensing.

Findings

Planet ejection efficiency up to 50% for secondary masses >10% of primary

Jovian mass planets migrate rapidly and are less likely to be ejected

Microlensing free-floating planets support formation via disc fragmentation

Abstract

Observations indicate that disc fragmentation due to Gravitational Instability (GI) is the likely origin of massive companions to stars, such as giant planets orbiting M-dwarf stars, Brown Dwarf (BD) companions to FGK stars, and binary stars with separations smaller than 100 au. Additionally, we have recently showed that disc fragmentation in young rapidly evolving binary systems ejects an abundant population of massive Jupiter-mass Free-Floating Planets (FFPs). In this model, a massive disc around an initially single protostar undergoes GI and hatches a number of fragments; the most massive oligarch grows by runaway accretion into the secondary star. As the system rearranges itself from a single to a binary star configuration, a dramatic "pincer movement" by the binary ejects planets through dynamical interactions with the stars. Here we propose that the same scenario applies to an even more abundant population of smaller FFPs discovered by the microlensing surveys. Although disc fragmentation is usually believed to form only massive objects, several pathways for forming small core-dominated planets at separations of tens of au exist. We present results from three complementary simulation approaches, all of which confirm planet ejection efficiency as high as 0.5 for secondaries more massive than $\sim 10$\% of the primary star mass. On the other hand, Jovian mass planets migrate through the region of tens of au too rapidly to eject planets from that region. We discuss implications of this scenario, concluding that microlensing FFPs may be the most convincing evidence yet that disc fragmentation forms planets much less massive than Jupiter.