Patterns in exoplanet count and eccentricity distributions

The distribution of exoplanets of contains an unexpected level of features, starting with an unexpected gap the splits the main pileup of much of the planet population. In the population of planets of metal-rich sunlike single stars (SLSS objects), which comprises 40% of planets found by the radial velocity method, when counting logarithmic periods the main pileup of planets with periods longer than 100 days is split into two peaks separated by a significant gap. There is a wide region which has so few planets that none are found in the current data set. We show that this gap is extremely unlikely to occur by random. Because this gap is well-filled among planets of low surface gravity and low metallicity stars with 31 objects, it is unlikely that the bimodal nature of the metal rich SLSS population is due to observational effects. Comparisons of eccentricity of the metal-rich and metal-poor SLSS populations depend strongly on the two-peak-gap structure of counts of the metal-rich SLSS (rSLSS) population. Consideration of these features is essential to properly study the correlations of eccentricity with other planet-system parameters given how the eccentricity of rSLSS objects is highest in the two peaks of the rSLSS population.