1997/10/10 by Gregory Laughlin, Fred C. Adams · 6 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrobiology #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Exoplanet #Giant planet #Metallicity #Physics #Planet #Planetary migration #Planetary system #Protoplanetary disk #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/311056
14 pages, AAS LaTeX, 3 figures, accepted to ApJ Letters
arxiv created 1997/10/10 · openalex publication_date 1997/12/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
A number of recently discovered extrasolar planet candidates have surprisingly small orbits, which may indicate that considerable orbital migration takes place in protoplanetary systems. A natural consequence of orbital migration is for a series of planets to be accreted, destroyed, and then thoroughly mixed into the convective envelope of the central star. We study the ramifications of planet accretion for the final main-sequence metallicity of the star. If maximum disk lifetimes are on the order of ~10 Myr, stars with masses near 1.0 M are predicted to have virtually no metallicity enhancement. On the other hand, early F- and late A-type stars with masses M * ≈ 1.5-2.0 M can experience significant metallicity enhancements due to their considerably smaller convection zones during the first 10 Myr of pre-main-sequence evolution. We show that the metallicities of an aggregate of unevolved F stars are consistent with an average star accreting ~2 Jupiter-mass planets from a protoplanetary disk having a 10 Myr dispersal time.