On the Fate of Close‐in Extrasolar Planets

It has been shown that there is a possible mass-period correlation forextrasolar planets from the current observational data and this correlation is,in fact, related to the absence of massive close-in planets, which are stronglyinfluenced by the tidal interaction with the central star. We confirm that themodel in P\"atzold & Rauer (2002) is a good approximation for the explanationof the absence of massive close-in planets. We thus further determine theminimum possible semimajor axis for these planets to be detected during theirlifetime and also study their migration time scale at different semimajor axesby the calculations of tidal interaction. We conclude that the mass-periodcorrelation at the time when these planets were just formed was less tight thanit is now observed if these orbital migrations are taken into account.Comment: 15 pages, accepted for publication in Ap