arXiv subjects

Yaxing He

Publications and source records attributed to Yaxing He.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The majority of hot Jupiters formed beyond the water ice line

Atmospheric compositions of giant exoplanets can retain information about their formation environments, as volatile species condense at different temperatures in protoplanetary discs. We investigated whether the atmospheric compositions of hot Jupiters can constrain their formation locations. We performed planet formation simulations using the ChemComp code, including pebble drift, pebble and gas accretion, planet migration, stellar abundances, and two additional chemical processes: thermal decomposition of refractory organics and CO/CO2 trapping in water ice. We applied this framework to nine observed hot Jupiter systems and compared the resulting atmospheric metallicities (C/H and O/H) with observational constraints. We found that the observed atmospheric abundances of the nine hot Jupiter systems can be reproduced by planets forming at different locations relative to the H2O and CO2 snowlines. Our results suggest that at least six of the nine systems are consistent with formation beyond the H2O snowline. Combined with the observed orbital separations, eccentricities, and spin-orbit obliquities, these inferred formation locations indicate that many systems likely experienced dynamical scattering followed by tidal evolution. Atmospheric abundances, in combination with detailed orbital parameters, can provide a powerful diagnostic of the formation and migration histories of hot Jupiter systems, opening up avenues to understand the origin of giant planets in general.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2026

Long-Term Evolution of Close-in Sub-Neptunes and Outer Planetary Embryos: Atmospheric Mass Loss and Origin of Planets Inside and Outside the Radius Gap

As a byproduct of sub-Neptune formation, planetary embryos with high eccentricity can remain in outer orbits, near 1 au from the star. In this work, we investigate the long-term evolution of systems consisting of close-in sub-Neptunes (SNs) and outer high-eccentricity embryos. Our analysis focuses on collisions between SNs and embryos, particularly their atmospheric mass loss. We performed N-body simulations for various initial eccentricities and numbers of embryos. We analyzed the impact-induced atmospheric loss using post-processing methods, finding that the embryos and SNs collide at high speeds on timescales of several million years, leading to the loss of the SNs' atmospheres. Depending on the embryos' eccentricity and the orbital radius of the SNs, the impact velocity can be quite high, ranging from 2 to 5 times the escape velocity. On average, about 15%-30% of the atmosphere is dissipated per collision, so after 3-6 collisions, the atmospheric mass of an SN is reduced to about 1/3 of its initial value. Collisions between SNs and embryos can thus explain the presence of planets within the radius gap. Depending upon the initial eccentricity and the number of remaining embryos, additional collisions can occur, potentially accounting for the formation of the radius gap. This study also indicates that collisions between remaining embryos and SNs may help to explain the observed rarity of SNs with atmospheric mass fractions greater than 10%, commonly termed the "radius cliff."

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2023

The stability of unevenly spaced planetary systems

Studying the orbital stability of multi-planet systems is essential to understand planet formation, estimate the stable time of an observed planetary system, and advance population synthesis models. Although previous studies have primarily focused on ideal systems characterized by uniform orbital separations, in reality a diverse range of orbital separations exists among planets within the same system. This study focuses on investigating the dynamical stability of systems with non-uniform separation. We considered a system with 10 planets with masses of $10^{-7}$ solar masses around a central star with a mass of $1$ solar mass. We performed more than 100,000 runs of N-body simulations with different parameters. Results demonstrate that reducing merely one pair of planetary spacing leads to an order of magnitude shorter orbital crossing times that could be formulated based on the Keplerian periods of the closest separation pair. Furthermore, the first collisions are found to be closely associated with the first encounter pair that is likely to be the closest separation pair initially. We conclude that when estimating the orbital crossing time and colliding pairs in a realistic situation, updating the formula derived for evenly spaced systems would be necessary.

astro-ph.EP↗