Disk-Driven Migration in Hot Jupiters

Seminar Date:
Wednesday, October 16th, 2013

Speaker:
Dr. Konstantin Batygin
Institute for Theory and Computation
Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Title:
Disk-Driven Migration in Hot Jupiters

Abstract:
The existence of gaseous giant planets whose orbits lie in close proximity to their host stars (“hot Jupiters") can naturally be accounted for by protoplanety disk-driven (type-II) migration, associated with viscous evolution of the nebulae. Recently, observations of this effect during planetary transits have revealed that a considerable fraction of detected hot Jupiters reside on orbits that are misaligned with respect to the spin-axes of their host stars. This observational fact has cast significant doubts on the importance of disk-driven migration as a mechanism for production of hot Jupiters, thereby reestablishing the origins of close-in planetary orbits as an open question. Here we show that spin-orbit misalignment is a natural consequence of disk-driven migration.