A paucity of proto-hot Jupiters on super-eccentric orbits

Understand

Gas giant planets orbiting within 0.1 AU of their host stars, unlikely to have formed in situ, are evidence for planetary migration.

• It is debated whether the typical hot Jupiter smoothly migrated inward from its formation location through the proto-planetary disk or was perturbed by another body onto a highly eccentric orbit, which tidal dissipation subsequently shrank and circularized during close stellar passages.
• Socrates and collaborators predicted that the latter class of model should produce a population of super-eccentric proto-hot Jupiters readily observable by Kepler.
• We find a paucity of such planets in the Kepler sample, inconsistent with the theoretical prediction with 96.9% confidence.