Abstract
(1) Background: We investigate the hypothesis that exoplanet engulfment can help explain the observed non-spherical planetary nebula population, as a complementary shaping mechanism to the binary hypothesis. The aim is to investigate the extent to which massive planets can explain the population of non-spherical planetary nebulae; (2) Methods: This research utilises a new tool to calculate the planet-fraction of planetary nebulae progenitor stars called simsplash; (3) Results: we conclude that ∼15–30% of non-spherical planetary nebulae around single stars will have a history in which they engulfed a massive planet on the AGB; and (4) Conclusions: Engulfment of massive exoplanets may contribute significantly to the formation of non-spherical planetary nebulae around single stars, yet appears to be insufficient to explain them all.
Highlights
According to the generalised interacting stellar winds (ISW) theory, to form a non-spherical PN, there needs to be a mechanism which can produce a density enhancement in the equatorial region of a mass-losing Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) star, or a mechanism by which the mass-loss is collimated as the fast wind blows
Planets orbiting within a few AU of their parent star are vulnerable to engulfment when the star evolves to the Red Giant Branch (RGB) or Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) ([4,5,6])
The Single-epoch population mode of SIMSPLASH is an efficient tool for analysing the known exoplanets. It can process samples from the Exoplanet Orbit Database, as well as synthetic planet populations derived from planet formation and evolution theory, with regard to planet engulfment in the progenitor population of planetary nebulae
Summary
According to the generalised interacting stellar winds (ISW) theory, to form a non-spherical PN, there needs to be a mechanism which can produce a density enhancement in the equatorial region of a mass-losing AGB star, or a mechanism by which the mass-loss is collimated as the fast wind blows. There are discrepancies between the stellar binary progenitor population and the population of non-spherical PNe [1]. A new hypothesis has emerged which says that a binary companion does not necessarily need to be stellar in nature and that the definition of a binary interaction in the shaping of PNe can be extended to include brown dwarfs and, as is the subject of this work, massive planets ([2,3,4]). Throughout this work, ‘engulfment’ is taken to be the point at which the planet makes contact with the star
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