paper

The Outcome of the Protoplanetary Disk of Very Massive Stars

arXiv:1002.4693 · doi:10.1016/j.newast.2010.06.003

Abstract

We suggest that planets, brown dwarfs, and even low mass stars can be formed by fragmentation of protoplanetary disks around very massive stars M>~100 solar masses. We discuss how fragmentation conditions make the formation of very massive planetary systems around very massive stars favorable. Such planetary systems are likely to be composed of brown dwarfs and low mass stars of ~0.1-0.3 solar masses, at orbital separations of ~ few x 100 - 10^4 AU. In particular, scaling from solar-like stars suggests that hundreds of Mercury-like planets might orbit very massive stars at ~1000 AU, where conditions might favor liquid water. Such fragmentation objects can be excellent targets for the James Webb Space Telescope and other large telescopes working in the IR bands. We predict that deep observations of very massive stars would reveal these fragmentation objects, orbiting in the same orbital plane in cases where there are more than one object.

Accepted to New Astronomy

References in corpus (19)