Mapping the exo-Neptunian landscape. A ridge between the desert and savanna

Abstract

Atmospheric and dynamical processes are thought to play a major role in shaping the distribution of close-in exoplanets. A striking feature of such distribution is the Neptunian desert, a dearth of Neptunes on the shortest-period orbits. We aimed to define the boundaries of the Neptunian desert and study its transition into the savanna, a moderately populated region at larger orbital distances. We built a sample of planets and candidates based on the Kepler DR25 catalogue and weighed it according to the transit and detection probabilities. We delimited the Neptunian desert as the close-in region of the period-radius space with no planets at a 3$σ$ level, and provide the community with simple, ready-to-use approximate boundaries. We identified an overdensity of planets separating the Neptunian desert from the savanna (3.2 days $ \lessapprox P_{\rm orb}$ $\lessapprox$ 5.7 days) that stands out at a 4.7$σ$ level above the desert and at a 3.5$σ$ level above the savanna, which we propose to call the Neptunian ridge. The period range of the ridge matches that of the hot Jupiter pileup ($\simeq$3-5 days), which suggests that similar evolutionary processes might act on both populations. We find that the occurrence fraction between the pileup and warm Jupiters is about twice that between the Neptunian ridge and savanna. Our revised landscape supports a previous hypothesis that a fraction of Neptunes were brought to the edge of the desert (i.e. the newly identified ridge) through high-eccentricity tidal migration (HEM) late in their life, surviving the evaporation that eroded Neptunes having arrived earlier in the desert. The ridge thus appears as a true physical feature illustrating the interplay between photoevaporation and HEM, providing further evidence of their role in shaping the distribution of close-in Neptunes.