M. Nguyen, V. Zh. Adibekyan

Abstract
The Core Accretion model is widely accepted as the primary mechanism for forming planets up to a few Jupiter masses. However, the formation of super-massive planets remains a subject of debate, as their formation via the Core Accretion model requires super-solar metallicities. Assuming stellar atmospheric abundances reflect the composition of protoplanetary disks, and that disk mass scales linearly with stellar mass, we calculated the total amount of metals in planet-building materials that could contribute to the formation of massive planets. In this work, we studied a sample of 172 Jupiter-mass planets and 93 planets with masses exceeding 4 M_jupiter. Our results consistently demonstrate that planets with masses above 4 M_jupiter form in disks with at least as much metal content as those hosting planets with masses between 1 and 4 M_jupiter, often with slightly higher metallicity, typically exceeding that of the proto-solar disk. We interpret this as strong evidence that the formation of very massive Jupiters is feasible through Core Accretion and encourage planet formation modelers to test our observational conclusions.

Keywords
Planet hosting stars; Methods: statistical; Chemical abundances; Exoplanet formation

Astrophysics and Space Science
Volume 369, Issue 122
2024 December

>> ADS>> DOI