Pursuing the planet-debris disk connection: Analysis of upper limits from the Anglo-Australian Planet Search

Abstract

Solid material in protoplanetary discs will suffer one of two fates after the epoch of planet formation; either being bound up into planetary bodies, or remaining in smaller planetesimals to be ground into dust. These end states are identified through detection of sub-stellar companions by periodic radial velocity (or transit) variations of the star, and excess emission at mid- and far-infrared wavelengths, respectively. Since the material that goes into producing the observable outcomes of planet formation is the same, we might expect these components to be related both to each other and their host star. Heretofore, our knowledge of planetary systems around other stars has been strongly limited by instrumental sensitivity. In this work, we combine observations at far-infrared wavelengths by IRAS, Spitzer, and Herschel with limits on planetary companions derived from non-detections in the 16-year Anglo-Australian Planet Search to clarify the architectures of these (potential) planetary systems and search for evidence of correlations between their constituent parts. We find no convincing evidence of such correlations, possibly owing to the dynamical history of the disk systems, or the greater distance of the planet-search targets. Our results place robust limits on the presence of Jupiter analogs which, in concert with the debris disk observations, provides insights on the small-body dynamics of these nearby systems.

Accepted for publication in AJ

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Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Solar System Physics for Exoplanet Research
• The Pan-Pacific Planet Search VI: Giant planets orbiting HD 86950 and HD 222076
• The Pan-Pacific Planet Search. VIII. Complete results and the occurrence rate of planets around low-luminosity giants
• The Surface Magnetic Activity of the Weak-Line T Tauri Stars TWA 7 and TWA 25