Speaker
Description
The connection between outer gas giants and inner super-Earths reflects their formation and evolutionary history. Past work exploring this link has suggested a tentative positive correlation between these two populations, but these studies were limited by small sample sizes and in some cases sample biases. In this talk I will highlight my recent collaborations with Eve Lee where we take a new look at this super-Earth/gas giant connection. With a sample of 184 super-Earth hosts, we show that there is a statistically significant positive correlation between super-Earths and outer gas giants around metal-rich FGK stars, and that this correlation disappears for metal-poor hosts. We next consider how this connection evolves across stellar mass, finding that the positive correlation between super-Earths and Jupiters is nonexistent for M-dwarfs, emerges in metal-rich K-dwarfs, and strengthens with increasing stellar mass. These findings reflect the critical role that disk solid budget plays in shaping architectures of planetary systems. Finally, I will preview our current efforts to understand the active role gas giants play in shaping small planet lives by focusing on the dependence of small planet properties on the presence of an outer gas giant.
