Constraining Tidal Migration with the Hot Jupiter Population
Abstract
Hot Jupiters with orbital periods shorter than a few days have probably been affected by tidal orbital migration. We develop an analytical framework for constraining tidal migration from the present-day hot Jupiter period distribution, taking into account the uncertain rate and period distribution of hot Jupiters produced by mechanisms such as high-eccentricity migration or disk-driven migration. Assuming the tidal migration timescale is proportional to Pχτ, solutions with χτ≃ 3, 1.7, and 5.6 are all compatible with the present-day period distribution. The χτ≃ 3 solution is consistent with equilibrium tides with suppression of dissipation at short periods, and implies that newly circularized hot Jupiters have periods concentrated near 3−4 days, as predicted in some high-eccentricity migration models. The χτ≃ 1.7 solution is also compatible with the 3−4 day peak but has no clear counterpart in existing tidal theories and is more finely tuned. The χτ≃ 5.6 solution is compatible with enhanced short-period equilibrium tidal dissipation or weakly nonlinear gravity-wave dissipation, but requires circularization at unexpectedly short periods. Thus, we find the model with χτ≃ 3 most appealing. Transit timing of individual systems and observational constraints on the rate of hot Jupiter engulfment provide additional constraints, which are presently inconclusive but should improve with future data. Improved measurements of the occurrence of short-period planets as a function of planet mass and system age could also help to sharpen the constraints on tidal migration.
Related
- Prospects for detecting hot-Jupiter tidal decay through transit timing with the mission Earth 2.0
- Dynamical Tides during High-eccentricity Migration Produce the Hot-Jupiter Pileup, Neptune Ridge, and Neptune Desert
- The Neptunian Final Parsec Problem: How Inertial Waves Enable Neptunes and Gas Giants to Survive Tidal Migration
- Rates of tidal disruption events from constrained cosmological simulations of the local Universe: population properties and implications for transient surveys
- Constraining exoplanet population parameters with Kepler and simulation-based inference
BibTeX
@misc{ma2026constraining,
title = {{Constraining Tidal Migration with the Hot Jupiter Population}},
author = {Linhao Ma and Yubo Su and Samuel W. Yee and Caleb Lammers and Eliot Quataert and Joshua N. Winn},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.10850},
eprint = {2609.10850},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10850},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Constraining Tidal Migration with the Hot Jupiter Population
AU - Linhao Ma
AU - Yubo Su
AU - Samuel W. Yee
AU - Caleb Lammers
AU - Eliot Quataert
AU - Joshua N. Winn
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/09
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.10850
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10850
AB - Hot Jupiters with orbital periods shorter than a few days have probably been affected by tidal orbital migration. We develop an analytical framework for constraining tidal migration from the present-day hot Jupiter period distribution, taking into account the uncertain rate and period distribution of hot Jupiters produced by mechanisms such as high-eccentricity migration or disk-driven migration. Assuming the tidal migration timescale is proportional to P^χ_τ, solutions with χ_τ≃ 3, 1.7, and 5.6 are all compatible with the present-day period distribution. The χ_τ≃ 3 solution is consistent with equilibrium tides with suppression of dissipation at short periods, and implies that newly circularized hot Jupiters have periods concentrated near 3−4 days, as predicted in some high-eccentricity migration models. The χ_τ≃ 1.7 solution is also compatible with the 3−4 day peak but has no clear counterpart in existing tidal theories and is more finely tuned. The χ_τ≃ 5.6 solution is compatible with enhanced short-period equilibrium tidal dissipation or weakly nonlinear gravity-wave dissipation, but requires circularization at unexpectedly short periods. Thus, we find the model with χ_τ≃ 3 most appealing. Transit timing of individual systems and observational constraints on the rate of hot Jupiter engulfment provide additional constraints, which are presently inconclusive but should improve with future data. Improved measurements of the occurrence of short-period planets as a function of planet mass and system age could also help to sharpen the constraints on tidal migration.
ER -