Q in Other Solar Systems

Understand

A significant fraction of the hot Jupiters with final circularized orbital periods of less than 5 days are thought to form through the channel of high-eccentricity migration.

• Tidal dissipation at successive periastron passages removes orbital energy of the planet, which has the potential for changes in semi-major axis of a factor of ten to a thousand.
• In the equilibrium tide approximation we show that, in order for high-eccentricity migration to take place, the relative level of tidal dissipation in Jupiter analogues must be at least 10 times higher than the upper-limit attributed to the Jupiter-Io interaction.
• While this is not a severe problem for high-e migration, it contradicts the results of several previous calculations.