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The Roles Of Tidal Evolution And Evaporative Mass Loss In The Origin Of Corot-7 B, Brian Jackson, Neil Miller, Rory Barnes, Sean N. Raymond, Jonathan J. Fortney, Richard Greenberg
The Roles Of Tidal Evolution And Evaporative Mass Loss In The Origin Of Corot-7 B, Brian Jackson, Neil Miller, Rory Barnes, Sean N. Raymond, Jonathan J. Fortney, Richard Greenberg
Brian Jackson
CoRoT-7 b is the first confirmed rocky exoplanet, but, with an orbital semimajor axis of 0.0172 au, its origins may be unlike any rocky planet in our Solar system. In this study, we consider the roles of tidal evolution and evaporative mass loss in CoRoT-7 b's history, which together have modified the planet's mass and orbit. If CoRoT-7 b has always been a rocky body, evaporation may have driven off almost half its original mass, but the mass loss may depend sensitively on the extent of tidal decay of its orbit. As tides caused CoRoT-7 b's orbit to decay, they …