Chemical constraints on the formation and migration of hot Jupiters

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• Nikku Madhusudhan (IoA)
• Wednesday 05 November 2014, 16:30-17:30
• Martin Ryle Seminar Room, Kavli Institute.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr B.-O. Demory.

The origin of close-in giant exoplanets is a long-standing puzzle. Planet formation theories suggest that such planets are unlikely to have formed in-situ but instead may have formed at large orbital separations beyond the snow line and migrated inward to their present orbits. Two competing hypotheses suggest that the planets migrated either through interaction with the protoplanetary disk during their formation, or by disk-free mechanisms such as gravitational interactions with a third body. Observations of eccentricities and spin-orbit misalignments of hot Jupiter systems have been unable to differentiate between the two hypotheses. In the present talk I will discuss how chemical abundances of exoplanetary atmospheres may be used to constrain their formation and migration mechanisms. In particular, we find that observable chemical depletions in hot Jupiter atmospheres have the potential to constrain their migration mechanisms which have thus far remained elusive based on dynamical measurements. I will discuss observational constraints from existing data sets along with several open questions in this new frontier.

This talk is part of the Exoplanet Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cambridge Astronomy Talks
• Combined External Astrophysics Talks DAMTP
• Cosmology, Astrophysics and General Relativity
• Exoplanet Seminars
• Institute of Astronomy Talk Lists
• LCLU Departmental Talks
• Martin Ryle Seminar Room, Kavli Institute

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