Influence of Planets on Parent Stars: Angular Momentum

Noam Soker

Published 2003-09-19Version 1

I review some possible processes by which planets and brown dwarfs can influence the evolution of their parent evolved stars. As sun-like stars evolve on the red giant branch (RGB) and then on the asymptotic giant branch (AGB), they will interact with their close planets (if exist). The interaction starts with tidal interaction: this will lead the planets to deposit most of their angular momentum to the envelope of the giant, and then spiral-in to the envelope. (Too many papers dealing with close planets [less than about 3-6 AU] around evolved stars neglect tidal interaction, hence their results are questionable.) They may spin-up their parent stars by up to several orders of magnitude. The interaction of substellar objects with evolved star may enhance the mass loss rate, mainly in the equatorial plane. Possible outcomes are: (i) Planetary systems interacting with their parent AGB star may lead to the formation of moderate elliptical planetary nebulae. (ii) RGB stars which lose more mass turn to bluer horizontal branch (HB) stars. Therefore, planets may explain the formation of blue HB stars. This may explain the presence of many blue HB stars in many globular clusters (the planets be the second parameter), and some hot HB stars in the galaxy (sdB stars). (The 8.3 days use of the Hubble Space Telescope in search of planets in a globular clusters with no blue HB stars was a wrong move.) (iii) Most known stars with planets will not form planetary nebulae, because they will lose most of their envelope already on the RGB.