Abstract: Understanding the occurrence of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars is essential to the search for Earth analogs. Yet a lack of reliable Kepler detections for such planets has forced many estimates to be derived from the close-in (2 < P-orb < 100 days) population, whose radii may have evolved differently under the effect of atmospheric mass-loss mechanisms. In this work, we compute the intrinsic occurrence rates of close-in super-Earths (similar to 1-2 R-circle plus and sub-Neptunes (similar to 2-3.5 R-circle plus) for FGK stars (0.56-1.63 M-circle dot) as a function of orbital period and find evidence of two regimes: where super-Earths are more abundant at short orbital periods, and where sub-Neptunes are more abundant at longer orbital periods. We fit a parametric model in five equally populated stellar mass bins and find that the orbital period of transition between these two regimes scales with stellar mass, like P-trans proportional to M-*(1.7 +/- 0.2). Ptrans These results suggest a population of former sub-Neptunes contaminating the population of gigayear-old close-in super-Earths, indicative of a population shaped by atmospheric loss. Using our model to constrain the long-period population of intrinsically rocky planets, we estimate an occurrence rate of Gamma(circle plus) = 15(-4)(+6)% for Earth-sized habitable zone planets, and predict that sub-Neptunes may be similar to twice as common as super-Earths in the habitable zone (when normalized over the natural log-orbital period and radius range used). Finally, we discuss our results in the context of future missions searching for habitable zone planets.

Abstract: Kepler's short-period exoplanet population has revealed evolutionary features such as the Radius Valley and the Hot Neptune desert that are likely sculpted by atmospheric loss over time. These findings suggest that the primordial planet population is different from the Gyr-old Kepler population, and motivates exoplanet searches around young stars. Here, we present pterodactyls, a data reduction pipeline specifically built to address the challenges in discovering exoplanets around young stars and to work with TESS Primary Mission 30-minute cadence photometry, since most young stars were not preselected TESS two-minute cadence targets. pterodactyls builds on publicly available and tested tools in order to extract, detrend, search, and vet transiting young planet candidates. We search five clusters with known transiting planets: the Tucana-Horologium Association, IC 2602, Upper Centaurus Lupus, Ursa Major, and Pisces-Eridani. We show that pterodactyls recovers seven out of the eight confirmed planets and one out of the two planet candidates, most of which were initially detected in two-minute cadence data. For these clusters, we conduct injection-recovery tests to characterize our detection efficiency, and compute an intrinsic planet occurrence rate of 49% +/- 20% for sub-Neptunes and Neptunes (1.8-6 R (circle plus)) within 12.5 days, which is higher than Kepler's Gyr-old occurrence rates of 6.8% +/- 0.3%. This potentially implies that these planets have shrunk with time due to atmospheric mass loss. However, a proper assessment of the occurrence of transiting young planets will require a larger sample unbiased to planets already detected. As such, pterodactyls will be used in future work to search and vet for planet candidates in nearby clusters and moving groups.

Abstract: Millimeter continuum imaging of protoplanetary disks reveals the distribution of solid particles and the presence of substructures (gaps and rings) beyond 5-10 au, while infrared (IR) spectra provide access to abundances of gaseous species at smaller disk radii. Building on recent observational findings of an anti-correlation between the inner disk water luminosity and outer dust disk radius, we aim here at investigating the dynamics of icy solids that drift from the outer disk and sublimate their ice inside the snow line, enriching the water vapor that is observed in the IR. We use a volatile-inclusive disk evolution model to explore a range of conditions (gap location, particle size, disk mass, and alpha viscosity) under which gaps in the outer disk efficiently block the inward drift of icy solids. We find that inner disk vapor enrichment is highly sensitive to the location of a disk gap, yielding for each particle size a radial “sweet spot” that reduces the inner disk vapor enrichment to a minimum. For pebbles of 1-10 mm in size, which carry the most mass, this sweet spot is at 7-15 au, suggesting that inner gaps may have a key role in reducing ice delivery to the inner disk and may not allow the formation of Earths and super-Earths. This highlights the importance of observationally determining the presence and properties of inner gaps in disks. Finally, we argue that the inner water vapor abundance can be used as a proxy for estimating the pebble drift efficiency and mass flux entering the inner disk.

Abstract: We propose a planet formation scenario to explain the elevated occurrence rates of transiting planets around M dwarfs compared to Sun-like stars discovered by Kepler. We use a pebble drift and accretion model to simulate the growth of planet cores inside and outside of the snow line. A smaller pebble size interior to the snow line delays the growth of super-Earths, allowing giant planet cores in the outer disk to form first. When those giant planets reach pebble isolation mass they cut off the flow of pebbles to the inner disk and prevent the formation of close-in super-Earths. We apply this model to stars with masses between 0.1 and 2 M (circle dot) and for a range of initial disk masses. We find that the masses of hot super-Earths and of cold giant planets are anticorrelated. The fraction of our simulations that form hot super-Earths is higher around lower-mass stars and matches the exoplanet occurrence rates from Kepler. The fraction of simulations forming cold giant planets is consistent with the stellar mass dependence from radial-velocity surveys. A key testable prediction of the pebble accretion hypothesis is that the occurrence rates of super-Earths should decrease again for M dwarfs near the substellar boundary like Trappist-1.

Abstract: Gaps in protoplanetary disks have long been hailed as signposts of planet formation. However, a direct link between exoplanets and disks remains hard to identify. We present a large sample study of ALMA disk surveys of nearby star-forming regions to disentangle this connection. All disks are classified as either structured (transition, ring, extended) or nonstructured (compact) disks. Although low-resolution observations may not identify large-scale substructure, we assume that an extended disk must contain substructure from a dust evolution argument. A comparison across ages reveals that structured disks retain high dust masses up to at least 10 Myr, whereas the dust mass of compact, nonstructured disks decreases over time. This can be understood if the dust mass evolves primarily by radial drift, unless drift is prevented by pressure bumps. We identify a stellar mass dependence of the fraction of structured disks. We propose a scenario linking this dependence with that of giant exoplanet occurrence rates. We show that there are enough exoplanets to account for the observed disk structures if transitional disks are created by exoplanets more massive than Jupiter and ring disks by exoplanets more massive than Neptune, under the assumption that most of those planets eventually migrate inwards. On the other hand, the known anticorrelation between transiting super-Earths and stellar mass implies those planets must form in the disks without observed structure, consistent with formation through pebble accretion in drift-dominated disks. These findings support an evolutionary scenario where the early formation of giant planets determines the disk's dust evolution and its observational appearance.