Tuesday, 19 June 2012

exoplanet - What proportion of planetary systems have been found with 'Hot Jupiters'

I completely agree with the answer from MBR. The number is actually $1.20pm 0.38$ per cent, is published by Wright et al. (2012) and is the fraction of F, G, K stars that have a hot Jupiter defined as being larger than 0.1 Jupiter masses and having an orbital period less than 10 days. Table 2 of that paper summarises results from other workers, who obtain between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent. The paper also discusses observational biases, including metallicity.



It has long been known that close-in planet incidence is higher around more metal-rich stars. There is also a bias whereby it is easier to find planets around metal-rich stars, whereas the average star in the solar neighborhood is slightly metal-poor compared with the Sun.



A study by Gonzalez (2014) accumulates our current knowledge of exoplanetary systems and their metallicities, deriving a planetary incidence rate
$$ P_{planet} = alpha 10^{beta[Fe/H]},$$
with $alpha= 0.022 pm 0.007$ (i.e. 2.2 per cent), $beta=3.0pm 0.5$ and where [Fe/H] is the usual logarithmic ratio of the metallicity of the star to the metallicity of the Sun. (i.e. the Sun has [Fe/H]=0).



This calculation is done for giant planets with orbital periods less than 4 years, so not all of them would be classed as hot Jupiters. Bottom line, the number given by Wright et al. is about right on average, but it is higher for higher metallicity stars.

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