Planets of young stars

Abstract

Since the first massive planet in a short period orbit was discovered, the question arised how such an object could have formed. There are basically two formation scenarios: migration due to planet-disk or planet-planet interaction. Which of the two scenarios is more realistic can be found out by observing short-period planets of stars with an age between 10E7 and 10E8 yrs. The second aim of the survey is to find out how many planets originally formed, and how many of these are destroyed in the first Gyrs: Do most young, close-in planets evaporate, or spiral into the host stars? In here we report on the first results of a radial-velocity search program for planets of young stars which we began in 2004. Using HARPS, we currently monitor 85 stars with ages between 10E7 and 10E8 yrs. We show that the detection of planets of young stars is possible. Up to now, we have identified 3 planet-candidates. Taking this result together with the results of other surveys, we conclude that the frequency of massive-short period planets of young stars is not dramatically higher than that of old stars.