Two Empirical Regimes of the Planetary Mass-Radius Relation

Understand

Today, with the large number of detected exoplanets and improved measurements, we can reach the next step of planetary characterization.

• Classifying different populations of planets is not only important for our understanding of the demographics of various planetary types in the galaxy, but also for our understanding of planet formation.
• We explore the nature of two regimes in the planetary mass-radius (M-R) relation.
• We suggest that the transition between the two regimes of "small" and "large" planets, occurs at a mass of 124 \pm 7, M_Earth and a radius of 12.1 \pm 0.5, R_Earth.