The Orbital Eccentricity─Radius Distribution for Warm, Single Planets in TESS

Fairnington, Tyler R.; Dong, Jiayin; Huang, Chelsea X.; Nabbie, Emma; Zhou, George; Wright, Duncan; Collins, Karen A.; Ciardi, David; Jenkins, Jon M.; Latham, David W.; Ricker, George; Quinn, Samuel N.; Seager, Sara; Shporer, Avi; Vanderspek, Roland; Winn, Joshua N.; Barkaoui, Khalid; Bieryla, Allyson; Buchhave, Lars; Cheryasov, Dmitry; Christiansen, Jessie; Dressing, Courtney; Fukui, Akihiko; Garmash, Alexey; Giacalone, Steven; Hintz, Eric G.; Howell, Steve B.; Isogai, Keisuke; de Leon, Jerome; Lillo-Box, Jorge; Murgas, Felipe; Narita, Norio; Nielsen, Louise D.; Palle, Enric; Rabus, Markus; Rackham, Benjamin V.; Schwarz, Richard P.; Srdoc, Gregor; Stephens, Denise C.; Wang, Gavin; Watanabe, Noriharu; Wilkin, Francis P.; Williams, Joe
Referencia bibliográfica

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

Fecha de publicación:
9
2026
Número de autores
43
Número de autores del IAC
5
Número de citas
5
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
We characterize the radius-dependent observed transiting eccentricity distribution of 219 warm (P = 8─50 days) systems with only one transiting planetary candidate identified during Sectors 1─69 of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. Using the "photoeccentric effect" in a hierarchical Bayesian framework, we first model the population using discrete planetary size bins (sub-Neptunes, sub-Saturns, and Jovians). We then develop a continuous mixture model with weights governed by a logistic sigmoid function of radius. We find that the warm-single population is best described by two components: a dominant low-eccentricity mode (<elow> = 0.039−0.038+0.018 ) and a secondary dynamically excited mode (<ehigh> = 0.466−0.068+0.067 ). The fraction of planets belonging to this high-eccentricity component increases strongly with planet radius, characterized by a transition at a break radius of Rbr = 9.2−1.1+1.9 R⊕. This trend places warm sub-Saturns predominantly on the same low-eccentricity track as sub-Neptunes. In contrast, warm Jovians (8─16 R⊕) are frequently eccentric, with 65−12+13% of the population in the high-eccentricity mode. Under the assumption of a two-component model, we see tentative evidence for a bimodal Jovian distribution at ∼2.7σ. Finally, we identify a nonnegligible tail of highly eccentric sub-Neptunes (1─4 R⊕), which comprise 16.2−6.4+5.2% of the population, consistent with excitation by nontransiting external companions.