On the alignment of debris discs and their host stars' rotation axis - implications for spin-orbit misalignment in exoplanetary systems
Abstract
It has been widely thought that measuring the misalignment angle between the orbital plane of a transiting exoplanet and the spin of its host star was a good discriminator between different migration processes for hot-Jupiters. Specifically, well-aligned hot-Jupiter systems (as measured by the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect) were thought to have formed via migration through interaction with a viscous disc, while misaligned systems were thought to have undergone a more violent dynamical history. These conclusions were based on the assumption that the planet-forming disc was well-aligned with the host star. Recent work by a number of authors has challenged this assumption by proposing mechanisms that act to drive the star-disc interaction out of alignment during the pre-main-sequence phase. We have estimated the stellar rotation axis of a sample of stars which host spatially resolved debris discs. Comparison of our derived stellar rotation axis inclination angles with the geometrically measured debris-disc inclinations shows no evidence for a misalignment between the two.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- May 2011
- DOI:
- 10.1111/j.1745-3933.2011.01036.x
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1009.4132
- Bibcode:
- 2011MNRAS.413L..71W
- Keywords:
-
- stars: activity;
- planetary systems;
- stars: rotation;
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- Accepted version for publication in the Letters of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Includes minor changes to abstract and introduction and reanalysis of statistics