Metal Stars & Their Implications for Planets

Some Stars are Totally Metal: A New Mechanism Driving Dust Across Star-Forming Clouds, and Consequences for Planets, Stars, and Galaxies

Authors:

Hopkins et al

Abstract:

Dust grains in neutral gas behave as aerodynamic particles, so they can develop large local density fluctuations entirely independent of gas density fluctuations. Specifically, gas turbulence can drive order-of-magnitude 'resonant' fluctuations in the dust density on scales where the gas stopping/drag timescale is comparable to the turbulent eddy turnover time. Here we show that for large grains (size greater than 0.1 micron, containing most grain mass) in sufficiently large molecular clouds (radii greater than 1-10 pc, masses greater than 10^4 solar), this scale becomes longer than the characteristic sizes of pre-stellar cores (the sonic length), so large fluctuations in the dust-to-gas ratio are imprinted on cores. As a result, star clusters and protostellar disks formed in large clouds should exhibit substantial abundance spreads in the elements preferentially found in large grains (C, O, Si). This naturally predicts populations of carbon-enhanced stars, certain highly unusual stellar populations observed in nearby open clusters, and may explain the 'UV upturn' in early-type galaxies. It will also dramatically change planet formation in the resulting protostellar disks, by preferentially seeding disks with an enhancement in large carbonaceous or silicate grains. The relevant threshold for this behavior scales simply with cloud densities and temperatures, making straightforward predictions for clusters in starbursts and high-redshift galaxies. Because of the selective sorting by size, this process is not visible in extinction mapping. We also predict the shape of the abundance distribution. When these fluctuations occur, a small fraction of the cores are actually seeded with abundances Z~100 Z_mean, such that they are almost 'totally metal' (Z~1)! Assuming the cores collapse, these totally metal stars would be rare (1 in 10^4 in clusters where this occurs), but represent a fundamentally new stellar evolution channel.

The Metallicity of Chamaeleon I Star Forming Region

The Gaia-ESO Survey: metallicity of the Chamaeleon I star forming region

Authors:

Spina et al

Abstract:

Context.

Recent metallicity determinations in young open clusters and star-forming regions suggest that the latter may be characterized by a slightly lower metallicity than the Sun and older clusters in the solar vicinity. However, these results are based on small statistics and inhomogeneous analyses. The Gaia-ESO Survey is observing and homogeneously analyzing large samples of stars in several young clusters and star-forming regions, hence allowing us to further investigate this issue.

Aims.

We present a new metallicity determination of the Chamaeleon I star-forming region, based on the products distributed in the first internal release of the Gaia-ESO Survey.

Methods.

48 candidate members of Chamaeleon I have been observed with the high-resolution spectrograph UVES. We use the surface gravity, lithium line equivalent width and position in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram to confirm the cluster members and we use the iron abundance to derive the mean metallicity of the region.

Results.

Out of the 48 targets, we confirm 15 high probability members. Considering the metallicity measurements for 9 of them, we find that the iron abundance of Chamaeleon I is slightly subsolar with a mean value [Fe/H]=-0.08+/-0.04 dex. This result is in agreement with the metallicity determination of other nearby star-forming regions and suggests that the chemical pattern of the youngest stars in the solar neighborhood is indeed more metal-poor than the Sun. We argue that this evidence may be related to the chemical distribution of the Gould Belt that contains most of the nearby star-forming regions and young clusters.

Survey of Three Brown Dwarfs Finds Disk Around KPNO TAU 3

THE DISK AROUND THE BROWN DWARF KPNO TAU 3

Authors:

Broekhoven-Fiene et al

Abstract:

We present submillimeter observations of the young brown dwarfs KPNO Tau 1, KPNO Tau 3, and KPNO Tau 6 at 450 μm and 850 μm taken with the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. KPNO Tau 3 and KPNO Tau 6 have been previously identified as Class II objects hosting accretion disks, whereas KPNO Tau 1 has been identified as a Class III object and shows no evidence of circumsubstellar material. Our 3σ detection of cold dust around KPNO Tau 3 implies a total disk mass of (4.0 ± 1.1) × 10–4 M ☉ (assuming a gas to dust ratio of 100:1). We place tight constraints on any disks around KPNO Tau 1 or KPNO Tau 6 of less than 2.1 × 10–4 M ☉ and less than 2.7 × 10–4 M ☉, respectively. Modeling the spectral energy distribution of KPNO Tau 3 and its disk suggests the disk properties (geometry, dust mass, and grain size distribution) are consistent with observations of other brown dwarf disks and low-mass T-Tauri stars. In particular, the disk-to-host mass ratio for KPNO Tau 3 is congruent with the scenario that at least some brown dwarfs form via the same mechanism as low-mass stars.

Detecting Circumstellar Disks Around Pulsars

Detection of precessing circumpulsar disks

Author:

Grimani

Abstract:

Experimental evidences indicate that formations of disks and planetary systems around pulsars are allowed. Unfortunately, direct detections through electromagnetic observations appear to be quite rare. In the case of PSR 1931+24, the hypothesis of a rigid precessing disk penetrating the pulsar light cylinder is found consistent with radio transient observations from this star. Disk self-occultation and precession may limit electromagnetic observations. Conversely, we show here that gravitational waves generated by disk precessing near the light cylinder of young and middle aged pulsars would be detected by future space interferometers with sensitivities like those expected for DECIGO (DECI-hertz Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) and BBO (Big Bang Observer). The characteristics of circumpulsar detectable precessing disks are estimated as a function of distance from the Solar System. Speculations on upper limits to detection rates are presented.

Snowlines in Protoplanetary Disks Result From Turbulence?

Snow-lines as probes of turbulent diffusion in protoplanetary discs

Authors:

Owen

Abstract:

Sharp chemical discontinuities can occur in protoplanetary discs, particularly at `snow-lines' where a gas-phase species freezes out to form ice grains. Such sharp discontinuities will diffuse out due to the turbulence suspected to drive angular momentum transport in accretion discs. We demonstrate that the concentration gradient - in the vicinity of the snow-line - of a species present outside a snow-line but destroyed inside is strongly sensitive to the level of turbulent diffusion (provided the chemical and transport time-scales are decoupled) and provides a direct measurement of the radial `Schmidt number' (the ratio of the angular momentum transport to radial turbulent diffusion). Taking as an example the tracer species N2H+, which is expected to be destroyed inside the CO snow-line (as recently observed in TW Hya) we show that ALMA observations possess significant angular resolution to constrain the Schmidt number. Since different turbulent driving mechanisms predict different Schmidt numbers, a direct measurement of the Schmidt number in accretion discs would allow inferences about the nature of the turbulence to be made.

Kepler Data Suggests Exoplanetary Systems Come in two Architectures

FREQUENCY OF CLOSE COMPANIONS AMONG KEPLER PLANETS—A TRANSIT TIME VARIATION STUDY

Authors:

Xie et al

Abstract:

A transiting planet exhibits sinusoidal transit time variations (TTVs) if perturbed by a companion near a mean-motion resonance. We search for sinusoidal TTVs in more than 2600 Kepler candidates, using the publicly available Kepler light curves (Q0-Q12). We find that the TTV fractions rise strikingly with the transit multiplicity. Systems where four or more planets transit enjoy a TTV fraction that is roughly five times higher than those where a single planet transits, and about twice as high as those for doubles and triples. In contrast, models in which all transiting planets arise from similar dynamical configurations predict comparable TTV fractions among these different systems. One simple explanation for our results is that there are at least two different classes of Kepler systems, one closely packed and one more sparsely populated.

How Binary Exoplanets can Form Through Tidal Capture

Extrasolar Binary Planets I: Formation by tidal capture during planet-planet scattering

Authors:

Ochiai et al

Abstract:

We have investigated i) the formation of gravitationally bounded pairs of gas-giant planets (which we call "binary planets") from capturing each other through planet-planet dynamical tide during their close encounters and ii) the following long-term orbital evolution due to planet-planet and planet-star {\it quasi-static} tides. For the initial evolution in phase i), we carried out N-body simulations of the systems consisting of three jupiter-mass planets taking into account the dynamical tide. The formation rate of the binary planets is as much as 10% of the systems that undergo orbital crossing and this fraction is almost independent of the initial stellarcentric semi-major axes of the planets, while ejection and merging rates sensitively depend on the semi-major axes. As a result of circularization by the planet-planet dynamical tide, typical binary separations are a few times the sum of the physical radii of the planets. After the orbital circularization, the evolution of the binary system is governed by long-term quasi-static tide. We analytically calculated the quasi-static tidal evolution in later phase ii). The binary planets first enter the spin-orbit synchronous state by the planet-planet tide. The planet-star tide removes angular momentum of the binary motion, eventually resulting in a collision between the planets. However, we found that the binary planets survive the tidal decay for main-sequence life time of solar-type stars (~10Gyrs), if the binary planets are beyond ~0.3 AU from the central stars. These results suggest that the binary planets can be detected by transit observations at less than 0.3AU.