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Jan 8

Tides on Lava Worlds: Application to Close-in Exoplanets and the Early Earth-Moon System

Understanding the physics of planetary magma oceans has been the subject of growing efforts, in light of the increasing abundance of Solar system samples and extrasolar surveys. A rocky planet harboring such an ocean is likely to interact tidally with its host star, planetary companions, or satellites. To date, however, models of the tidal response and heat generation of magma oceans have been restricted to the framework of weakly viscous solids, ignoring the dynamical fluid behavior of the ocean beyond a critical melt fraction. Here we provide a handy analytical model that accommodates this phase transition, allowing for a physical estimation of the tidal response of lava worlds. We apply the model in two settings: The tidal history of the early Earth-Moon system in the aftermath of the giant impact; and the tidal interplay between short-period exoplanets and their host stars. For the former, we show that the fluid behavior of the Earth's molten surface drives efficient early Lunar recession to {sim} 25 Earth radii within 10^4{-} 10^5 years, in contrast with earlier predictions. For close-in exoplanets, we report on how their molten surfaces significantly change their spin-orbit dynamics, allowing them to evade spin-orbit resonances and accelerating their track towards tidal synchronization from a Gyr to Myr timescale. Moreover, we re-evaluate the energy budgets of detected close-in exoplanets, highlighting how the surface thermodynamics of these planets are likely controlled by enhanced, fluid-driven tidal heating, rather than vigorous insolation, and how this regime change substantially alters predictions for their surface temperatures.

  • 5 authors
·
Dec 10, 2024

Characterizing WASP-43b's interior structure: unveiling tidal decay and apsidal motion

Context. Recent developments in exoplanetary research highlight the importance of Love numbers in understanding their internal dynamics, formation, migration history and their potential habitability. Love numbers represent crucial parameters that gauge how exoplanets respond to external forces such as tidal interactions and rotational effects. By measuring these responses, we can gain insights into the internal structure, composition, and density distribution of exoplanets. The rate of apsidal precession of a planetary orbit is directly linked to the second-order fluid Love number, thus we can gain valuable insights into the mass distribution of the planet. Aims. In this context, we aim to re-determine the orbital parameters of WASP-43b-in particular, orbital period, eccentricity, and argument of the periastron-and its orbital evolution. We study the outcomes of the tidal interaction with the host star:whether tidal decay and periastron precession are occurring in the system. Method. We observed the system with HARPS, whose data we present for the first time, and we also analyse the newly acquired JWST full-phase light curve. We fit jointly archival and new radial velocity and transit and occultation mid-times, including tidal decay, periastron precession and long-term acceleration in the system. Results. We detected a tidal decay rate of \dotP_a=(-1.99pm0.50) and a periastron precession rate of \dotomega=(0.1851+0.0070-0.0077)=(0.1727+0.0083-0.0089)deg/d=(621.72+29.88-32.04)arcsec/d. This is the first time that both periastron precession and tidal decay are simultaneously detected in an exoplanetary system. The observed tidal interactions can neither be explained by the tidal contribution to apsidal motion of a non-aligned stellar or planetary rotation axis nor by assuming non-synchronous rotation for the planet, and a value for the planetary Love number cannot be derived. [...]

  • 11 authors
·
Jan 7, 2025

A Comprehensive Perturbative Formalism for Phase Mixing in Perturbed Disks. II. Phase Spirals in an Inhomogeneous Disk Galaxy with a Non-responsive Dark Matter Halo

We develop a linear perturbative formalism to compute the response of an inhomogeneous stellar disk embedded in a non-responsive dark matter halo to perturbations like bars, spiral arms and satellite galaxy encounters. Without self-gravity to reinforce it, the response of a Fourier mode phase mixes away due to an intrinsic spread in the vertical (Omega_z), radial (Omega_r) and azimuthal (Omega_phi) frequencies, giving rise to local phase-space spirals. Collisional diffusion due to scattering of stars by structures like giant molecular clouds causes super-exponential damping of the phase-spiral amplitude. The z-v_z phase-spiral is 1-armed (2-armed) for vertically anti-symmetric (symmetric) bending (breathing) modes. Only transient perturbations with timescales (tau_{P}) comparable to the vertical oscillation period (tau_z sim 1/Omega_z) trigger z-v_z phase-spirals. Each (n,l,m) mode of the response to impulsive (tau_{P}<tau=1/(nOmega_z+lOmega_r+mOmega_phi)) perturbations is power law (sim tau_{P}/tau) suppressed, but that to adiabatic (tau_{P}>tau) perturbations is exponentially weak (sim left[-left(tau_{mathrm{P}/tauright)^alpharight]}) except resonant (tauto infty) modes. Slower (tau_{P}>tau_z) perturbations, e.g., distant encounters with satellite galaxies, induce stronger bending modes. If the Gaia phase-spiral was triggered by a satellite, Sagittarius is the leading contender as it dominates the Solar neighborhood response of the Milky Way disk to satellite encounters. However, survival against collisional damping necessitates that the impact occurred within sim 0.6-0.7 Gyr ago. We discuss how the detailed galactic potential dictates the phase-spiral shape: phase mixing occurs slower and phase-spirals are less wound in the outer disk and in presence of an ambient halo.

  • 3 authors
·
Feb 28, 2023

Clinical Evaluation of Medical Image Synthesis: A Case Study in Wireless Capsule Endoscopy

Synthetic Data Generation (SDG) based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) can transform the way clinical medicine is delivered by overcoming privacy barriers that currently render clinical data sharing difficult. This is the key to accelerating the development of digital tools contributing to enhanced patient safety. Such tools include robust data-driven clinical decision support systems, and example-based digital training tools that will enable healthcare professionals to improve their diagnostic performance for enhanced patient safety. This study focuses on the clinical evaluation of medical SDG, with a proof-of-concept investigation on diagnosing Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) using Wireless Capsule Endoscopy (WCE) images. Its scientific contributions include a) a novel protocol for the systematic Clinical Evaluation of Medical Image Synthesis (CEMIS); b) a novel variational autoencoder-based model for the generation of high-resolution synthetic WCE images; and c) a comprehensive evaluation of the synthetic images using the CEMIS protocol by 10 international WCE specialists, in terms of image quality, diversity, and realism, as well as their utility for clinical decision-making. The results show that TIDE-II generates clinically plausible, very realistic WCE images, of improved quality compared to relevant state-of-the-art generative models. Concludingly, CEMIS can serve as a reference for future research on medical image-generation techniques, while the adaptation/extension of the architecture of TIDE-II to other imaging domains can be promising.

  • 13 authors
·
Oct 31, 2024

The Coupled Tidal Evolution of the Moons and Spins of Warm Exoplanets

Context: The Solar System giant planets harbour a wide variety of moons. Moons around exoplanets are plausibly similarly abundant, even though most of them are likely too small to be easily detectable with modern instruments. Moons are known to affect the long-term dynamics of the spin of their host planets; however, their influence on warm exoplanets (i.e.\ with moderately short periods of about 10 to 200~days), which undergo significant star-planet tidal dissipation, is still unclear. Aims: Here, we study the coupled dynamical evolution of exomoons and the spin dynamics of their host planets, focusing on warm exoplanets. Methods: Analytical criteria give the relevant dynamical regimes at play as a function of the system's parameters. Possible evolution tracks mostly depend on the hierarchy of timescales between the star-planet and the moon-planet tidal dissipations. We illustrate the variety of possible trajectories using self-consistent numerical simulations. Results: We find two principal results: i) Due to star-planet tidal dissipation, a substantial fraction of warm exoplanets naturally evolve through a phase of instability for the moon's orbit (the `Laplace plane' instability). Many warm exoplanets may have lost their moon(s) through this process. ii) Surviving moons slowly migrate inwards due to the moon-planet tidal dissipation until they are disrupted below the Roche limit. During their last migration stage, moons -- even small ones -- eject planets from their tidal spin equilibrium. Conclusions: The loss of moons through the Laplace plane instability may contribute to disfavour the detection of moons around close-in exoplanets. Moreover, moons (even those that have been lost) play a critical role in the final obliquities of warm exoplanets. Hence, the existence of exomoons poses a serious challenge in predicting the present-day obliquities of observed exoplanets.

  • 2 authors
·
Oct 31, 2025

The sharpness of the quark-hadron transition and the properties of hybrid stars

We investigate the effects of the sharpness of the phase transition between hadronic matter and quark matter on various properties of neutron stars. We construct hybrid equations of state by combining a hadronic model with a quark model using a Gaussian function. This approach introduces a smooth transition characterized by two parameters: one representing the overpressure relative to the first-order phase transition point, and the other related to the range over which the hybrid region extends in baryon chemical potential. We find that the sharpness of the phase transition significantly influences the equation of state, which can deviate by several tens of MeV fm^{-3} from the one with a sharp first-order transition. The speed of sound exhibits diverse behaviors, including drastic drops, pronounced peaks, and oscillatory patterns, depending on the sharpness parameters. In terms of stellar structure, while the maximum neutron star mass remains largely unaffected by the sharpness of the phase transition, the stellar radii can vary significantly. Smoother transitions lead to a leftward shift (up to 1 km) of the mass-radius curve segment corresponding to hybrid stars. The tidal deformability decreases with smoother transitions, especially for higher-mass stars. Our results are quite general and do not qualitatively depend on the specific hadronic and quark matter models employed. In fact, the hybrid equation of state and stellar properties derived from microscopic models of quark-hadron pasta phases display the same behavior as described above.

  • 4 authors
·
Oct 2, 2025

The impact of stellar winds and tidal locking effects on the habitability of Earth-like exoplanets around M dwarf stars

We present an assessment of the effects of stellar wind magnetic and mechanical components on the habitability of Earth-like exoplanets orbiting the inner and outer radii of the habitable zone (HZ) of M dwarfs. We consider stars with masses in the range of 0.09 - 0.75 M_odot and planets with a surface dipolar magnetic field of 0.5 G. We estimate the size of the magnetospheres of such exoplanets using the pressure balance equation including the contribution of magnetic and ram pressures from stellar winds. We explore different scenarios, including fast and slow stellar winds, to assess the relevance of kinetic contribution. Furthermore, the effect of tidal locking and potential deviations from the Parker spiral, typically used to describe the interplanetary magnetic field, are analyzed. We show that for low mass stars (M < 0.15 M_odot), the ram pressure exerted by stellar winds affects the size of the magnetosphere more than the stellar wind magnetic pressure. Interestingly, when the ram pressure is not much stronger than the magnetic pressure, typically for higher mass stars, the inclusion of ram pressure can be beneficial to the magnetosphere due to the magnetopause currents. A magnetosphere with the size of that of modern Earth is difficult to achieve with the current assumptions. However, an early Earth magnetosphere is achieved by roughly half of our hypothetical planets orbiting the outer radius of the HZ in most of the considered cases. We find that deviations from the Parker spiral can affect the results significantly, reducing the magnetosphere by 56% in extreme cases. Most of the hypothetical planets are most likely (or might be) tidally locked, with the notable exception of those orbiting the outer HZ of GJ 846 and V1005 Ori.

  • 3 authors
·
Oct 23, 2025

Is planetary inward migration responsible for GJ 504's fast rotation and bright X-ray luminosity? New constraints from eROSITA

The discovery of an increasing variety of exoplanets in very close orbits around their host stars raised many questions about how stars and planets interact, and to which extent host stars' properties may be influenced by the presence of close-by companions. Understanding how the evolution of stars is impacted by the interactions with their planets is fundamental to disentangle their intrinsic evolution from Star-Planet Interactions (SPI)-induced phenomena. GJ 504 is a promising candidate for a star that underwent strong SPI. Its unusually short rotational period (3.4 days), while being in contrast with what is expected by single-star models, could result from the inward migration of a close-by, massive companion, pushed starward by tides. Moreover, its brighter X-ray luminosity may hint at a rejuvenation of the dynamo process sustaining the stellar magnetic field, consequent to the SPI-induced spin-up. We aim to study the evolution of GJ 504 and establish whether by invoking the engulfment of a planetary companion we can better reproduce its rotational period and X-ray luminosity. We simulate the past evolution assuming two different scenarios: 'Star without close-by planet', 'Star with close-by planet'. In the second scenario, we investigate how inward migration and planetary engulfment driven by tides spin up the stellar surface and rejuvenate its dynamo. We compare our tracks with rotational period and X-ray data collected from the all-sky surveys of the ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array (eROSITA) on board the Russian Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma mission (SRG). Despite the very uncertain stellar age, we found that the second evolutionary scenario is in better agreement with the short rotational period and the bright X-ray luminosity of GJ 504, thus strongly favouring the inward migration scenario over the one in which close-by planets have no tidal impact on the star.

  • 7 authors
·
Jan 13, 2025

Identification of Low Surface Brightness Tidal Features in Galaxies Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Faint tidal features around galaxies record their merger and interaction histories over cosmic time. Due to their low surface brightnesses and complex morphologies, existing automated methods struggle to detect such features and most work to date has heavily relied on visual inspection. This presents a major obstacle to quantitative study of tidal debris features in large statistical samples, and hence the ability to be able to use these features to advance understanding of the galaxy population as a whole. This paper uses convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with dropout and augmentation to identify galaxies in the CFHTLS-Wide Survey that have faint tidal features. Evaluating the performance of the CNNs against previously-published expert visual classifications, we find that our method achieves high (76%) completeness and low (20%) contamination, and also performs considerably better than other automated methods recently applied in the literature. We argue that CNNs offer a promising approach to effective automatic identification of low surface brightness tidal debris features in and around galaxies. When applied to forthcoming deep wide-field imaging surveys (e.g. LSST, Euclid), CNNs have the potential to provide a several order-of-magnitude increase in the sample size of morphologically-perturbed galaxies and thereby facilitate a much-anticipated revolution in terms of quantitative low surface brightness science.

  • 4 authors
·
Nov 28, 2018

High-energy neutrino emission from tidal disruption event outflow-cloud interactions

Tidal disruption events (TDEs), characterized by their luminous transients and high-velocity outflows, have emerged as plausible sources of high-energy neutrinos contributing to the diffuse neutrino. In this study, we calculate the contribution of TDEs to the diffuse neutrino by employing the outflow-cloud model within the TDE framework. Our analysis indicates that the contribution of TDEs becomes negligible when the redshift Z exceeds 2. Employing a set of fiducial values, which includes outflow energy E_{rm kin}=10^{51} erg, a proton spectrum cutoff energy E_{rm p,max}=100 PeV, a volume TDE rate N=8 times 10^{-7} rm Mpc^{-3} year^{-1}, covering fraction of clouds C_V=0.1, energy conversion efficiency in the shock eta =0.1, and a proton spectrum index Gamma=-1.7, we find that TDEs can account for approximately 80\% of the contribution at energies around 0.3 PeV. Additionally, TDEs still contribute around 18\% to the IceCube data below 0.1 PeV and the total contribution is sim 24^{+2}_{-15}%. In addition, we also discuss the potential influence of various parameter values on the results in detail. With the IceCube data, we impose constraints on the combination of the physical parameters, i.e., C_{f}=NE_{rm kin}C_{rm v}eta. Future observations or theoretical considerations would fix some physical parameters, which will help to constrain some individual parameters of TDEs.

  • 3 authors
·
Jul 16, 2024

The Effect of Minor and Major Mergers on the Evolution of Low Excitation Radio Galaxies

We use deep, mu_{r} lesssim 28,mag,arcsec^{-2}, r-band imaging from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) to search for past, or ongoing, merger activity in a sample of 282 Low Excitation Radio Galaxies (LERGs) at z<0.07. Our principle aim is to assess the the role of mergers in the evolution of LERGs. Exploiting the imaging depth, we classify tidal remnants around galaxies as both minor and major morphological disturbances for our LERG sample and 1,622 control galaxies matched in redshift, stellar mass, and environment. In groups and in the field, the LERG minor merger fraction is consistent with the control population. In galaxy clusters, 8.8 pm 2.9, % of LERGs show evidence of recent minor mergers in contrast to 23.0pm 2.0, % of controls. This sim 4 sigma deficit of minor mergers in cluster LERGs suggests these events may inhibit this type of nuclear activity for galaxies within the cluster environment. We observe a > 4sigma excess of major mergers in the LERGs with M_{*} lesssim 10^{11},M_{odot}, with 10 pm 1.5, % of these AGN involved in such large-scale interactions compared to 3.2 pm 0.4,% of control galaxies. This excess of major mergers in LERGs decreases with increasing stellar mass, vanishing by M_{*} > 10^{11.3},M_{odot}. These observations show that minor mergers do not fuel LERGs, and are consistent with typical LERGs being powered by accretion of matter from their halo. Where LERGs are associated with major mergers, these objects may evolve into more efficiently accreting active galactic nuclei as the merger progresses and more gas falls on to the central engine.

  • 11 authors
·
Apr 30, 2019