2025/09/02 by Mahapatra, Sukdev
#Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.03549
The radius valley -- a deficit of exoplanets between super-Earths and sub-Neptunes -- is a key diagnostic of planet formation and atmospheric evolution. We investigate how the radius valley depends on stellar type by analyzing an updated, transit-only sample of exoplanets from the NASA Exoplanet Archive. Planets are selected with P < 100 days and divided by host spectral class (M, K, G, F). We construct weighted radius distributions and apply statistical tests to quantify the valley depth. We recover a pronounced valley centered near ∼ 1.8 R_⊕ for G/K stars, but shifted to ∼ 1.6 R_⊕ for M dwarfs and ∼ 1.9 R_⊕ for F stars. These results support the view that the radius valley is shaped by stellar-dependent processes such as photoevaporation, core-powered mass loss, and orbital migration.