2001/05/31 by A. Jorissen, M. Mayor, S. Udry · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Scientific Research and Discoveries #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20011373
Accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysics (7 pages, 4 figures)
arxiv created 2001/10/05 · openalex publication_date 2001/12/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
The present study derives the distribution of secondary masses M2 for the 67 exoplanets and very low-mass brown-dwarf companions of solar-type stars, known as of April 4, 2001. This distribution is related to the distribution of through an integral equation of Abel's type. Although a formal solution exists for this equation, it is known to be ill-conditioned, and is thus very sensitive to the statistical noise present in the input distribution. To overcome this difficulty, we present two robust, independent approaches: (i) the formal solution of the integral equation is numerically computed after performing an optimal smoothing of the input distribution and (ii) the Lucy-Richardson algorithm is used to invert the integral equation. Both approaches give consistent results. The resulting statistical distribution of exoplanet true masses reveals that there is no reason to ascribe the transition between giant planets and brown dwarfs to the threshold mass for deuterium ignition (about 13.6 MJ). The M2 distribution shows instead that most of the objects have , but there is a small tail with a few heavier candidates around 15 MJ.