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Thermally Regulated Viscoelastic Tidal Migration of Eccentric Planets

  • Authors: Cristobal Petrovich, Hareesh Gautham Bhaskar

Cristobal Petrovich and Hareesh Gautham Bhaskar 2026 The Astrophysical Journal Letters 1007 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 6.

Fraction of isolated hot Neptunes (10 < Mp/M < 30; blue) and hot Jupiters (Mp > 100 M; red) with eccentricities exceeding a threshold ecrit as a function of inferred circularization radius, af = a(1 − e2). The two panels correspond to ecrit = 0.1 and 0.2. Points show fixed-width 0.02 au bins, and labels give the number of eccentric planets relative to the total number of systems in each bin. Systems are required to have reported eccentricity uncertainties σe < 0.1, and hosts with known planetary companions inside 0.5 au are excluded. Hot Jupiters show a pronounced decline in eccentric fraction toward smaller af, while hot Neptunes show little evidence for a comparable trend. Although the current hot-Neptune sample remains small, this behavior is qualitatively consistent with the weak dependence of circularization time on final orbital distance predicted by thermally regulated tidal evolution.

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