At least one in a dozen stars shows evidence of planetary ingestion

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Date
2024-03-20
Authors
Liu, Fan
Ting, Yuan-Sen
Yong, David
Bitsch, Bertram
Karakas, Amanda
Murphy, Michael T.
Joyce, Meridith
Dotter, Aaron
Dai, Fei
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Springer Nature Ltd.
Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07091-y
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Abstract
Stellar chemical compositions can be altered by ingestion of planetary material1,2 and/or planet formation, which removes refractory material from the protostellar disk3,4. These ‘planet signatures’ appear as correlations between elemental abundance differences and the dust condensation temperature3,5,6. Detecting these planet signatures, however, is challenging owing to unknown occurrence rates, small amplitudes and heterogeneous star samples with large differences in stellar ages7,8. Therefore, stars born together (that is, co-natal) with identical compositions can facilitate the detection of planet signatures. Although previous spectroscopic studies have been limited to a small number of binary stars9,10,11,12,13, the Gaia satellite14 provides opportunities for detecting stellar chemical signatures of planets among co-moving pairs of stars confirmed to be co-natal15,16. Here we report high-precision chemical abundances for a homogeneous sample of ninety-one co-natal pairs of stars with a well defined selection function and identify at least seven instances of planetary ingestion, corresponding to an occurrence rate of eight per cent. An independent Bayesian indicator is deployed, which can effectively disentangle the planet signatures from other factors, such as random abundance variation and atomic diffusion17. Our study provides evidence of planet signatures and facilitates a deeper understanding of the star–planet–chemistry connection by providing observational constraints on the mechanisms of planet engulfment, formation and evolution.
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Keywords
Star–planet–chemistry connection , Planetary ingestion , Planet engulfment, formation and evolution , Star
Citation
Liu, F., Ting, Y.-S., Yong, D., Bitsch, B., Karakas, A., Murphy, M. T., Joyce, M., Dotter, A. and Dai, F. (2024) 'At least one in a dozen stars shows evidence of planetary ingestion', Nature, 627, pp. 501-504. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07091-y
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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/15778
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Physics - Journal Articles
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© 2024, the Authors, under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published as: Liu, F., Ting, Y.-S., Yong, D., Bitsch, B., Karakas, A., Murphy, M. T., Joyce, M., Dotter, A. and Dai, F. (2024) 'At least one in a dozen stars shows evidence of planetary ingestion', Nature, 627, pp. 501-504. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07091-y