| Issue |
A&A
Volume 667, November 2022
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | A127 | |
| Number of page(s) | 9 | |
| Section | Planets and planetary systems | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202244280 | |
| Published online | 18 November 2022 | |
Planet-star interactions with precise transit timing
III. Entering the regime of dynamical tides★,★★
1
Institute of Astronomy, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń,
Grudziadzka 5,
87-100
Toruń, Poland
e-mail: gmac@umk.pl
2
Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC),
Glorieta de la Astronomía 3,
18008
Granada, Spain
3
Institute of Astronomy and National Astronomical Observatory, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences,
72 Tsarigradsko Chaussee Blvd.,
1784
Sofia, Bulgaria
4
Michael Adrian Observatorium, Astronomie Stiftung Trebur,
65428
Trebur, Germany
5
University of Applied Sciences, Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen,
61169
Friedberg, Germany
6
Astrophysikalisches Institut und Universitäts-Sternwarte,
Schillergässchen 2,
07745
Jena, Germany
7
Valencia International University,
46002
Valencia, Spain
Received:
15
June
2022
Accepted:
21
September
2022
Context. Hot Jupiters on extremely short-period orbits are expected to be unstable due to tidal dissipation and spiral toward their host stars. That is because they transfer the angular momentum of the orbital motion through tidal dissipation into the stellar interior. Although the magnitude of this phenomenon is related to the physical properties of a specific star-planet system, statistical studies show that tidal dissipation might shape the architecture of hot Jupiter systems during the stellar lifetime on the main sequence.
Aims. The efficiency of tidal dissipation remains poorly constrained in star-planet systems. Stellar interior models show that the dissipation of dynamical tides in radiation zones could be the dominant mechanism driving planetary orbital decay. These theoretical predictions can be verified with the transit timing method.
Methods. We acquired new precise transit mid-times for five planets. They were previously identified as the best candidates for which orbital decay might be detected. Analysis of the timing data allowed us to place tighter constraints on the orbital decay rate.
Results. No statistically significant changes in their orbital periods were detected for all five hot Jupiters in systems HAT-P-23, KELT-1, KELT-16, WASP-18, and WASP-103. For planets HAT-P-23 b, WASP-18 b, and WASP-103 b, observations show that the mechanism of the dynamical tidal dissipation probably does not operate in their host stars, preventing their orbits from rapidly decaying. This finding aligns with the models of stellar interiors of F-type stars, in which dynamical tides are not fully damped due to convective cores. For KELT-16 b, the span of transit timing data was not long enough to verify the theoretical predictions. KELT-1 b was identified as a potential laboratory for studying the dissipative tidal interactions of inertial waves in a convective layer. Continued observations of those two planets may provide further empirical verification of the tidal dissipation theory.
Key words: planet-star interactions / planets and satellites: dynamical evolution and stability / methods: observational / techniques: photometric
The ground-based light curves and the full Table A.2 are only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr (130.79.128.5) or via https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/667/A127
This research is partly based on: (1) data obtained at the 1.5 m telescope of the Sierra Nevada Observatory (Spain), which is operated by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) through the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía; (2) observations collected with telescopes at the Rozhen National Astronomical Observatory; and (3) observations obtained with telescopes of the University Observatory Jena, which is operated by the Astrophysical Institute of the Friedrich-Schiller-University.
© G. Maciejewski et al. 2022
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article is published in open access under the Subscribe-to-Open model. Subscribe to A&A to support open access publication.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.