A sub-Saturn Mass-Radius Desert for Planets with Equilibrium Temperature Less than 600 K

David G. Russell

doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2023.115798

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arXiv · 2307.05836

A sub-Saturn Mass-Radius Desert for Planets with Equilibrium Temperature Less than 600 K

David G. Russell

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Abstract

The sample of exoplanets from the NASA Exoplanet Archive with equilibrium temperature less than 600 K and with low uncertainty for both mass and radius measurements is found to have a desert in the mass-radius distribution consistent with predictions from the core-accretion scenario. This sub-Saturn mass-radius desert is almost completely barren of any planets with both a mass greater than 20 Earth masses and a radius in the range 4.0 to 7.5 Earth radii for the sample of planets with equilibrium temperature less than 600 K. In contrast, the sample of planets with equilibrium temperature greater than 630 K includes a large fraction of planets with mass-radius values that fall into the less than 600 K sub-Saturn mass-radius desert. The difference between the two populations may result from differences in migration history in the core-accretion scenario.

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David G. Russell. 2023-07-11. A sub-Saturn Mass-Radius Desert for Planets with Equilibrium Temperature Less than 600 K. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2023.115798

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