No Sub-Saturn Mass Planet Desert in the CORALIE/HARPS Radial Velocity Sample

Understand

We analyze the CORALIE/HARPS sample of exoplanets (Mayor et al.

• 2011) found by the Doppler radial velocity method for signs of the predicted &#34;desert&#34; at 10-$100 M_\odot$ caused by runaway gas accretion at semimajor axes of $< 3\,$AU.
• We find that these data are not consistent with this prediction.
• This result is similar to the finding by the MOA gravitational microlensing survey that found no desert in the exoplanet distribution for exoplanets in slightly longer period orbits and somewhat lower host masses (Suzuki et al.