Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
EPSC Abstracts
Vol.14, EPSC2020-94, 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-94
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Unveiling the Planet Population at Birth

James Rogers and James Owen
James Rogers and James Owen
  • Imperial College London, Physics, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (james.rogers14@imperial.ac.uk)

Recent Kepler data has shown that the radius distribution of small, close-in exoplanets is bimodal. Such bimodality was expected from photoevaporation models of close-in super-Earths, where some planets are stripped of their primordial H/He atmospheres, whilst others retain them. We present a hierarchical inference model on the distribution of Kepler planets using the photoevaporation evolution model. This approach is used to place key constraints on the planetary distributions for core composition, core mass and initial envelope mass-fraction, as well as test other models of planet evolution such as core-powered mass-loss. This new information has interesting implications on planet formation models and also hints at additional atmopsheric mass-loss mechanisms.

How to cite: Rogers, J. and Owen, J.: Unveiling the Planet Population at Birth, Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, 21 September–9 Oct 2020, EPSC2020-94, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-94, 2020