High eccentricity ``spike'' in the multiple planet population

 I seek collaborators to put the following discovery into my paper in preparation on features in the number distribution and eccentricity of the exoplanet population. This is a newer discovery of a ``spike'' in the eccentricity distribution by period of the planets in multiple planet systems. I add this to my finding of the double peak around a gap and my finding of the nature of there being a correlation between eccentricity and iron abundance of the star that changes with period. This includes how there is a region in between 500 and 600 days where the eccentricity of orbits of stars more iron-poor than the sun ``spikes'' in eccentricity.

Do you want to join me in writing this for the full peer reviewed publication?

Introduction

How could there be a ``spike’’ of five high eccentricities clumped together in period out of one population of planets hosted by sunlike stars that has 95 planets selected to be sunlike in temperature, surface gravity, and absence of a stellar companion? Specifically, when the eccentricities versus period of the population of just planets that are in multiple planets systems, five eccentricities are clumped together in period that collectively have higher eccentricities than anywhere elsewhere in the logarithmic period space of exoplanets. These eccentricities especially stand out above the rest when looking at the 20 planets with periods from 10 to 100 days by being much higher than any eccentricities of the other 15 planets. Though among these 95 planets there is a rise in the spread of eccentricities with increasing period, four of these five eccentricities are still higher than any of the other 90 eccentricities.

Fig. 1. The eccentricities versus periods of all stars. The eccentricities of orbits of stars more iron abundant than the sun (``iron-rich,'' red open circles) are higher at most all periods than the eccentricities of orbits of stars less iron abundant than the sun (` `iron-poor,'' blue filled circles).

Fig. 2. Eccentricities of the orbits of planets around only stars that are ``sunlike'' in temperature and surface gravity, and in being single stars. Symbols same as Fig. 1. The lower eccentricity at most periods of orbits of stars more iron rich than the sun can be seen, as well as the peaking of the eccentricity of orbits of stars that are poor in iron relative to the sun at periods above 500 days.

 

 Eccentricity as a function of period for selected populations

All and Sunlike:

The eccentricity as a function of period, with whether iron-abundance is poorer or richer than solar indicated, are shown in Fig. 1 for the full and some selections of the 429 orbits of planets found by radial velocity (RV) found with periods of up to 5000 days, followed by Fig. 2 which shows the selection of 243 orbits chosen for stars that are more ``sunlike’’. The ``sunlike’’ sample was selected by taking the 243 planets of the 429 available objects found by RV, where ``objects’’ refers to the set of parameters describing a planet, its star, and their orbit. Stars with different parameters might not have the same features or have them at the same period, so only stars similar to the sun are compared here. Since planet searches have emphasized sunlike stars, this group of stars has the highest number of objects with similar stars available for study. Sunlike objects are those which have stars that have no stellar companion with effective temperatures (or Teff) of 4500 to 6500 K to be close to the Teff of the sun of 5772 K, and with surface gravity not too much less than the sun's value given in logarithmic terms of 4.4. We do not at this time remove stars with very different masses than the sun because not too many remain in this sample, but it may later be important since the small data on lower mass stars could indicate that the peaks and gap feature may occur at shorter periods. Different markers are used to separate orbits by whether the star is poorer or richer in iron abundance than the sun, [Fe/H] <= 0 or [Fe/H] > 0 respectively, shown by the blue filled or red unfilled circles respectively. Table 1 gives the counts in each cut with each cut divided into how many iron-poor and iron-rich objects there are.

Features stand out:

Several features stand out, starting with a broad increase in eccentricity with period at the shorter periods that results from the shortest period orbits having their eccentricities reduced (commonly said to be ``circularized'') due to tidal interaction with the star.  This affects all populations of orbits. When those orbits of stars that have less or more iron than the sun are separated, which are referred to as ``iron-poor'' and ``iron-rich'' objects, it can be seen that the eccentricities of the iron-rich objects rise more rapidly from zero than do the eccentricities of the iron-poor objects, leading to the ``eccentricity-metallicity’’ correlation found between the eccentricity of moderately short period planet orbits and iron abundances found by Taylor (2012, 2013b) and Dawson \& Murray-Clay (2013). This correlation is strongest at periods of roughly 100 days (the ``valley’’ region) but may persist more weakly at periods up to 500 days. The eccentricities of the iron-rich objects have a broader peak, while the eccentricities of the iron-poor objects come more sharply to a peak, and then decline more. The result of the peaking of the eccentricities of iron-poor objects is that the correlation between eccentricity and iron abundance goes away for a middle range of periods from 500 days (shown in Taylor 2013b) upward into the periods where we are showing there is a gap in the number distribution of iron-rich objects. We are preparing work that shows that beyond that gap, the correlation likely returns.

In further work, it will be shown that the correlation of eccentricity is not simply bimodal with iron abundance but the eccentricity changes gradually with iron abundance, that is that the eccentricities of objects slightly above solar have, in periods where the correlation exists, a higher means than iron-poor objects but lower means than for objects with the highest iron abundances.

Fig. 3. Eccentricity versus period of planet orbits of sunlike stars in single-planets, with marker symbols showing whether the iron abundance is above or below solar ([Fe/H] of 0) as in Fig. 1.

Fig. 4. The ''spike'' in the eccentricity of planet orbits of sunlike stars that are in multiple planets systems can be seen clearly here all being between periods of 44 and 75 days. Symbols as in Fig 1. Four of these five are higher than the eccentricity of any other eccentricity. The eccentricity clearly slowly rises with period for both iron-poor and iron-rich stars, though few iron-poor stars are found in multiple systems at longer periods.

Different patterns in eccentricity by period of orbits

 in single-planet versus Multi-planet systems:

In the next two figures the eccentricity versus period is shown for two populations formed by further dividing the sunlike sample of 243 objects. Fig. 3 shows the eccentricities for the 148 ``single-planet’’ objects for which the planet is the only planet found orbiting its host star, and Fig. 4 shows eccentricities for the 95 ``multi-planet’’ objects for which one or more additional planets has been found.

The single-planet sample has a distribution that retains more of the description of the full sample, as this sample has higher mean eccentricities at most periods. This is expected given that the orbits in multi-planet systems are constrained from being too eccentric.

The eccentricities of the multi-planet sample do not peak but continue to rise with period, though the number counts of iron-poor multi-planet objects drops off such that there are far fewer iron-poor multi-planet objects than iron-rich multi-planet objects at periods longer than 1000 days.For multiplanet objects in just sunlike systems there is 1 iron poor vs 23 iron-rich objects at periods longer than 1000 days.

Single-planet and Multi-planet:

We take the 243 sunlike objects separately show the eccentricity versus period distributions for the 148 orbits of ``single-planet’’ objects, or of planets that are the only planet found, and of 95 ``mutiple-planet’’, or of planets for which at least one more planetary companion has been found. The breakdown of counts into iron-poor and rich objects are given in Table 1.

The two distributions look quite different, with the eccentricities of the multiple planets lower in general. This is as expected that a planet is more likely to have a more orderly orbit if there is another planet in the system. The full description of how different these two populations are will be given in upcoming work, while the focus here is on the spike in eccentricity in the multiple planet population. Some qualitative differences besides the spike jump out, including how in the multiple-planet population, the number of iron-poor objects drops off at longer periods. This drop off contributes to the ratio of iron-poor to rich objects being higher for the single planets (40:108 or 0.37) than for multiple planets (23:72 or 0.32).

Whether other than the spike the shape of the eccentricity distributions in the multiple planet population bear a lower eccentricity resemblance to the single planet distribution is a subject of current work. The highest eccentricity point of the iron-poor multiple planet population, HD_192310_c, is at 0.32 much higher than the 2^nd highest eccentricity of 0.21 (the 24.451 day HD_7924_d). Its 525.8 ± 9.2 day period fits within the 500 to 600 day period range of the spike in eccentricity of the general population that is the subject of Taylor (2014). While it may be difficult to attach too much significance to one point, it is notable for being such an outlier.

The region of the spike in the eccentricity versus period distribution of the multiple planet population corresponds to a region without similarly high eccentricity objects in the same period range of the single planet population, though if objects that include stars with stellar companions are not cut, there is one such object in this period range of the iron-rich population of the full (not sunlike) selection.

This does raise the possibility that perhaps the spike is simply ``cut out’’ of the single plus multiple planet population by a greater likelihood of finding a planetary companion for planets within this region. This could be true of either physical causes or observational effects. It seems unlikely, though, that the shorter period edge could be a result of not finding companions to shorter period planets. It is worth further work studying this possible effect.

Table 1. Counts of numbers of objects in figures in each cut, with counts of objects divided by whether the abundance of iron of the star is poorer or richer than the sun.

Fig Number	Selection	Total objects	Iron-poor objects	Iron-rich objects
1	All RV objects	429	149	280
2	``Sunlike’’ objects in temperature and surface gravity	243	63	180
3	Single-planet sunlike objects	148	40	108
4	Multiple-planet sunlike objects	95	23	72

Spike Description:

The five planets comprising this spike have orbits with periods from 44 .2 to 75.3 days. Planets orbits tend to be spaced at increasing distances such that it is best to look at planet orbits in ``log space’’ where it is common to give the logarithm to the base 10. When looked at in log period space, this is the very small range of 0.23, going from 1.65 to 1.88 in logarithmic period. This 0.23 is very small given that the range of RV planets that are comparable can be said to have a length of 2.58 in ``log period space’’, going from below 10 days to 5000 days, which is going from log of 1 to log of 3.70. How could planets that are in multiple planet systems have orbits with the highest eccentricities be confined to such a small range?

We must evaluate not only whether this spike could be random or observational, but also whether it could be a result of making the selection of the parameters, especially on making the selection on multiple planet systems. We address how could be possible that planets selecting a part of a larger population, in this case choosing those planets that are in multiple planet versus single planet systems, could have led to a small range in period of planets being preferentially put into this multiple-planet population while planets just outside this range might be preferentially chosen into the single-planet population. It could be the observational effect that planets in slightly longer periods would actually still be in multiple systems but at longer periods that are still too long for them to have been found. A similar explanation would be that there simply are not further planets at the longer periods, but this physical explanation would be of interest as it would be relevant to the existence of peaks in the planet population counted by period.

The presence of high eccentricity orbits in the corresponding period range shortwards of the spike in the single planet system population argues against explanation of tidal dissipation in the star creating the short-period edge of the spike. It also argues against  not having found companions as an observational effect since these companion would not be expected to have longer periods, unless there is a physical reason for the companions not to have been found. It is possible that the longer period companions would have periods within the gap that has been found in the iron-rich population, but that these companion planets are simply ``not present’’ due to the gap.`

Likelihood Section:

Calculations show a low likelihood that high eccentricity orbits would be so close in period

The first questions to ask when seeing an apparent feature must be to determine whether the feature is a real physical feature, starting with asking if the feature might just be a random fluctuation in a small numbers of data points.

The chance that the highest planets in eccentricity would be confined such a small range depends on whether the likelihood is evaluated as being the chance of five high values occurring in the somewhat local range where all five are the highest values, or if the chance of the four highest values occurring over the entire range, but the two give similar results of under one percent and a few thousandths respectively.

The five orbits can be considered to by five pairs of log period and eccentricity values. These are listed below, with the (not log) periods in days preceding each pair for easy reference:

Table 2: Period 

(in days and in base 10 logarithm of the period in days) 

and eccentricity of the five high eccentricity objects.

PER	log period	ECC
day
44.24	1.65	0.47
51.64	1.71	0.63
55.01	1.74	0.68
58.11	1.76	0.53
75.29	1.88	0.73

The calculated likelihood of a certain number of periods occurring within a larger range depends on the length of the range we consider these values might have occurred in. Below we will calculate the likelihood for the five values to be higher in a large part of the full range in period, and then will calculate the likelihood that four values have higher eccentricity than any other object at any period. We choose to be conservative by considering that higher periods are only likely to be larger for longer period orbits, due to the general pattern for eccentricities to get larger with increasing period as a general pattern up to periods of several hundred days. We consider that the eccentricities of shorter period orbits may be lessened by the tidal interaction with the star that tends to circularize the shortest period orbits, so to be conservative, we look for the possibility that these eccentricities randomly occur at some period from shortest period of the spike to one of two longer periods discussed below. It should be noted that in the population of planets without planetary companions, there are high-eccentricity planets by periods of 20 days, so the period ranges given below could have been taken to be longer, even further reducing the likelihoods given below. Looking at the values of eccentricity versus period for single planets shows higher eccentricities for shorter periods in that population, however, leading the values calculated here to give a higher likelihood of this spike resulting from chance, but we choose to err on the conservative side.  In calculating the probability that these periods will occur within the spike range, we take the shortest period of the high eccentricity points, 44.2 days or 1.65 in log-period space, as the shortest period of the range of the periods just as likely to have high eccentricity orbits. The next period at which a higher eccentricity than the lowest of the five occurs is at 567.9 days, or 2.75 in log period space, so these five values could have occurred anywhere along a log period range of 1.11, but they all occurred within 0.23. So the likelihood that five points that could have occurred in 1.11 but occurred in 0.23 can be calculated by finding how often five values appear in the fraction 0.23/1.11=0.21 of points randomly generated from 0 to 1.

Performing random selections of one million sets of five periods from 0 to one shows that only 0.7% of random selections of five values will be within a range of 0.21 of each other. We calculate this by taking the difference between the highest and lowest of the five selected values to allow for the possibility of the five points grouping anywhere within this range. We repeat this procedure to consider how likely is it that the highest four points are within the short range that we find them where we could find them in anywhere up to the full 5000 days for which RV periods are available, or 1.99 in log period from the log values of the period range of 51.6 days to 5000 days. Since the lowest of the five eccentricity values also corresponds to the shortest period, there are now four points from periods 51.6 to 75.3 days, which is 1.71 to 1.88 in log period, spanning a range of 0.16 in log period. This is 0.082 of the 1.99. The chance of randomly having four points within 0.082 randomly generated from points from 0 to 1 is 0.21%. We conclude that this feature is unlikely due to random clustering of the periods at the better than 1% level.

Abundance

The five high eccentricity orbits are characterized by much higher iron abundance in the stars than in the other 15 of the 20 orbits in the full population in the similar period range from 10 to 100 days, reflecting the strong correlation between iron-abundance and eccentricity found in this range. Four of the five have iron abundances higher than all 15 of the stars with low eccentricity planets in this range, and the lowest iron abundance of the five is still higher than more than half of the other 15.

Discussion

Simulations of the likelihood that the periods of the four or five highest eccentricity objects show that the spike is unlikely to be completely random. It is also unlikely to be completely observational effect, but the presence of high eccentricities in a small range of period could be influenced by the interaction between the physical distribution and how additional planets are found.

It is essential to consider whether this spike is merely ``shaved’’ out of the full distribution. The short and long period edges are considered separately. The shorter period edge of the spike could be created by shorter-period orbits having their eccentricities reduced by tidal dissipation. For the longer period edge, there is the possibility that there are higher eccentricity longer-period orbits of planets in systems with more than one planet for which the additional planets have not yet been found so these eccentricity values are still showing in the single-planet plot instead. While both of these possibilities should be researched further, comparison with the single-planet distribution gives some evidence that these are not the explanation for the appearance of a spike. This evidence includes how orbital circularization falls off more quickly allowing higher eccentricities in the single-planet population with periods shorter than 44 days. The single-planet distribution has a rise in eccentricities for periods much shorter than 44 days, and it is more of a gradual rise. It must be noted that the region of the spike shows a possible hole in this region in period space of the high-eccentricity envelope of the single-planet population.

At slightly longer periods, there is a paucity of high-eccentricity systems for both single and multiple planet populations from the range of the spike to over 100 day periods, so there are not enough values there to move over to the multi-planet population. (It is worth noting this paucity that is longwards of the spike, but low statistics makes it uncertain that this paucity is an actual gap feature.)

Does having so many different sources invalidate these results?

It is important to address that the catalog of planet orbits is collected from many different surveys which can have very different efficiencies and standards, which lead many to distrust looking in such a collected dataset for patterns. It is hard to believe that the appearance of these features could be from differences between different observers, especially given how different populations show clearly different patterns that it is improbable that observers could be selecting for. Any observational effects should similarly affect measurements of planets hosted by sunlike or not sunlike stars, and single or multiple planets or stars. For some features to appear so strongly should give confidence that the quality of RV exoplanet data is consistently very high.

Further observations to lead to further work:

It appears that, other than the spike, the shape of eccentricity distribution by period of iron-poor and iron-moderately-high multiple planets appears to be a ``pushed down’’ version of the single planets distribution. Future work must address whether both the iron poor objects in the full population and the iron poor objects in the multiple planet population have a similar spreading of the spike with increasing iron abundance in the range  0 < [Fe/H] < 0.1 of the in eccentricity that occurs in the 500-600 day range.

Conclusion:

The finding of a spike in eccentricity in the population of planets with planetary companions again shows that pattern formation and evolution leads to more uniform distributions than expected. The presence of distinct features in the eccentricity and number distribution by period shows that the evolution of planets which could include activity such as planet scattering after formation that could smooth out these patterns, is likely not to overly disturb patterns that occur in system after systems.

These results suggest that the pattern of planet formation is like more predictable and less random from one planet system to the next. The presence of these features prompts the suggestion that observers of protoplanetary disks (PPDs) look for whether the rings and gaps in PPDs tend to have repeating patterns from disk to disk, or if the features now being found in PPDs tend to be found at random periods. The preservation of features in the number and eccentricity distribution presents the opportunity to learn about planet formation through studying features found in the parameters of mature planet systems.

Purpose of Discovering Exoplanet Features: To Participate in Exoplanet Science

Announcement of upcoming posts and scientific paper, where I will post and publish important features of the planet distribution. 

 I hope to start a pattern of posting results while working to a paper, rather than hiding intermediate results until everything comes out in a scientific paper. I invite others to collaborate with me on publishing these results: There are enough patterns in the exoplanet distribution for many first author papers. I will be posting new results on a spike in the distribution of multiple planets, new details of how the double-peak and gap feature previously posted about is actually two gaps separated by a small pileup, new ways of proving that the gap is real, new insights into the iron abundance-eccentricity correlation likely being valid at most periods, and I will show how the iron-poor spike feature relates to the rise and fall of eccentricities of orbits of iron-poor stars.

First, I am posting a rough statement of purpose: To challenge the science community to make certain that paths are available to junior scientists to continue in science and not be shut out. I challenge the science community to assist me in reversing being excluded from LCOGT photometry by reversing having presented as peer reviewed publications many papers that do not credit me being included on a single paper. This happened after LCOGT reneged on my appointment very early despite my excellent record of performance. I declare the claims that these papers have been peer reviewed to be false, based on the necessity of including all author-level contributors in the peer review process. By excluding my participation in the author review of these papers using false claims that I did not contribute intellectually, I have been left unable to obtain the employment necessary to reasonably participate in exoplanet astronomy, and have been wrongfully kept out of science as a result.

I show my results for which I am first finding so many features in the next few days for the purpose of showing that I the type of scientist that the science community must keep involved in science, by keeping me as a member of collaborations such as Kepler and TESS. I have sought to be in exoplanet research since 1992 but had struggled to change fields from nuclear physics to exoplanet research, so I was thrilled that at LCOGT to start our exoplanet research program in 2005 because it meant that I was fully involved in exoplanet research. I was doing the exoplanet transit observations to prepare to be a part of the Kepler project from the start of the Kepler mission. When my appointment was reneged on in 2007, I made it as clear as humanly possible that I was in no way willing to leave being a part of the LCOGT group preparing for Kepler. All supposed indications of me being willing to leave were made under extraordinary duress.

Due to my need to focus on the paper, the following is not yet polished:

I am doing my best to contribute to the new statement on ethics being created by the AAS to stress that ethical procedures must give recourse.

Purposes:

•         Participation in exoplanet research, which I have been seeking since 1992
•         Promote ethics requiring keeping the path open for every scientist and not blocking anyone.
•        Define peer review to necessarily include ``author peer review'', with no manipulation of author-list data allowed any more than manipulation of any other data.
•         Require standards of inclusion of contributing persons, by ending allowing moving contributors out of papers by keeping them from working, especially by hostile means including shutting down computer accounts and hampering communication with collaborators.
•        Expect all scientists and groups to support ``Going around ostracizing groups’’ by colleagues with better affiliations: All scientists must help if they find out that a collaborating organization has obstructed someone who has been one of its members from participating in the collaboration, by providing alternate access to data and communication. Data must not be accepted from subgroups from organizations keeping out someone who should be included as a member.
•        Reject denying credit by journals using fabricated excuses such as false claims that no intellectual contributions have been made, especially when fabrications include interrupting work to minimize further contributions and allowing no discussion of how contributions were intellectual work. Project planning is in fact intellectual work, even more so when doing support work of projects you have been heavily involved in planning.
•        Establish ethical guidelines that oppose territoriality especially when stealing others’ contributions by moving out good people.

I present my struggle to write the papers alone in the absence of these ethics. It has required that I start my learning over, having to learn the planet distribution without the benefit of having finished learning photometry in 2007. I wish it had been as easy as jumping to this new subject, but it took years of searching with false starts learning several new areas before I found this area. For presenting these distributions, I had to learn how to give the proof required to show these are real. I tried publishing these results on the double peak and gap in 2013, after trying to publish the eccentricity-iron abundance correlation, but without support or colleagues was unable to obtain the fully desired peer review. I am willing to show how this demonstrates that the science community cannot keep out someone who is due staying in the group. It would have been far better for these results to have been shared in my groups in 2013, instead it is 2016 and most scientists have never heard of these features.

I am presenting this as part of seeking collaborators to work on the planet distribution, as well as seeking support from those who should have been my collaborators doing photometry for putting me back on papers I did not want to be kept off of.

I seek to return to being a part of UCSB like every other LCOGT scientist, but seek support of my participation from institutions such as the University of Hawaii that are involved with the global network that is LCOGT but that have not been as complicit as UCSB in obstructing my participation. I am proud to have sought to have been a part of TESS and Kepler missions from their beginning, taking the chance long before missions started.

My passion really is: To do astronomy with other people. I have not wanted to make these discoveries alone.

Preview of results to be posted in next few days:

I give here a preview of my results being prepared to be published in a scientific paper, in an effort to attract collaborators given how I have been made to work alone even though I am a very social scientist. I have presented many of these features in many conferences, seeking out collaborators whenever possible. I am finding it hard for scientists to break out of the system and work with someone who does not have an institutional affiliation, but I am also finding it hard to fulfill all of the expectations of writing a scientific paper when I have not been given the same chance as astronomers in normal institutions to finish my appointment such that I can keep my relationships with collaborators after changing institutions. I use this preview presentation of some very important results to make an appeal to the astronomy community to help me find new ways to properly finish my appointment at LCOGT after that observatory reneged on finishing my appointment in a manner intentionally designed to make it difficult for me to continue as an astronomer. Here I explain my motivations in trying to stay in astronomy even after being declared persona non grata by LCOGT even though I had over 8 months left on my assignment at the telescope in Maui, Hawaii followed by an expected return to join the main group in California. I present these results in a campaign to attract other exoplanet astronomers to support me being their collaborator.

New Features in the Exoplanet Distribution:

I am now preparing to present features in both a scientific publication and on this blog, as part of my goal seeking group participation in finding and understanding exoplanets. I present a newly discovered feature, the spike in high eccentricity among multiple planets that tracks significantly with iron abundance. This is in addition to the spike in the iron-poor population of the full sample of RV planets.

Still to come are full defense of how these features are neither the result of random chance or from observational effects. Those are necessary for a scientific paper to be

approved by the peer review arranged by the scientific journal.

These are the features I will be presenting soon:

•  Double peak and gap in the distribution of iron-rich single-star sunlike star single-planet distribution
• Gap and longer period peak still present in the distribution of iron-rich single-star sunlike star multiple-planet distribution, but the shorter period peak is either moved or smaller if there at all.
• Two spikes in eccentricity, including the gradual spreading of the spike with iron-abundances gradually going above solar.
• Eccentricity metallicity correlation, including gradual change rather than just being two populations

I have found these features in the distribution of planets found by radial velocity (RV). In all figures, I show only ``objects'' found by RV, where I use ``object'' as a collective term for the parameters of planets, their stars, and their orbit. Unless I specific I am referring to more stars, I am commonly studying a selection (cut) of stars to be ``sunlike'' by having temperatures between 4500 and 6500 K, having a surface gravity acceleration of more than 10^4.0 cm/sec^2 which is written as ``log g>4.0,'' and also to not have a stellar companion. These temperature and gravity cuts are to remove stars further along in their evolutionary sequence. Binary stars often ``excite'' the eccentricity of planets, and indeed in 2013 I found that orbits of planets of stars with stellar companions do indeed have higher mean eccentricities than orbits of stars not to have found to have companions -- a result that evidences that observers have in fact done a good job of finding at least the larger stellar companions that are likely to make a difference. (I do not cut out low or high mass stars which I may do in the future because of how the long period peak of low mass stars is at a lower period). 

The distribution of periods of planets of single sunlike stars, with those of iron-rich stars shown in red (not filled) and those of iron-poor stars in blue (filled), shows a gap from periods of 494 to 923 days, with a deep gap of zero planets from 656 to 923 day periods.

Comparing this histogram of counting periods of all planets found by radial velocity (RV) shows that there are 67 periods in the wide gap and 31 in the deep gap. A comparison of the parameters of these ``objects'' (planets+stars+orbits) with the neighboring regions shows the chance that the gap is either random or observational to be less than one in a million.

This histogram of the single planet population, selected from the above population of sunlike single star planets, shows that the double peaks and gap are strong features of periods of ``loner'' planets that are not found to be in multiple planet systems. We further see that there is a shorter period gap of zero planets as well as the wider longer period gap. Separating these two gaps are just two planets in this distribution, but they align well with planets in the multiple period distribution suggesting that this pileup could be real rather than just that the small number of periods between the peaks are nearby.

This histogram of the multiple planet population, again selected from the above population of sunlike single star planets, shows that the longer period peak and the deep gap are strong features of periods of multiple planets, but the shorter period peak may not be. The shorter period gap and small pileup separating the two gaps may also be a feature of this pileup, but because it does not quite align with the bins, one member of that pileup falls in the bin of the more narrow gap. That one period is at the longer period edge of that bin. These bins were aligned to show the dramatic jump from zero planets in the gap to an abrupt long period peak.

My next blog post will be to present a new feature, the spike in high eccentricity among multiple planets in the 10 to 100 day period that tracks significantly with iron abundance. It is amazing how well the eccentricities of multiple planets in the 10 to 100 day period range track with iron abundance. This is in addition to the spike in the iron-poor population of the full sample of RV planets.

By causing me to struggle to write papers on the distribution alone, I was delayed learning how it is necessary give the proof required to show these are real. I published to the astro-ph arxiv prepreint server my results in 2013 but working alone was not able to write clearly enough on this new subject fully desired peer review. It is unreasonable for the community to expect to deny me sought after involvement with the community and then expect me while home alone to come up with a clearly written paper satisfying the statistical expectations that are normally desired. There is good reason for such discoveries to be supported by good writing, but the community must do better to not so badly handicap someone from being able to meet these standards. I am willing to make this a public example to show how this demonstrates that the science community cannot keep out someone who is due staying in the group. It would have been better for these results to have been shared in my groups in 2013, instead it is 2016 and most scientists have never heard of these features.

A new ``spike'' in eccentricity is presented in this plot of orbits of planets in multiple planet systems hosted by sunlike stars.  Not only are all five of the 20 objects in between periods of 10 and 100 days with eccentricities greater than 0.21 in a narrow period range, the iron abundances of the five as a group are much higher than the iron abundances of the fifteen stars having planets with orbits of 0.21 or less. Here, orbits of stars more iron abundant than the sun (``iron-rich'') are identified with red open circles, and orbits of stars with less iron abundances than the sun (``iron-poor'') are identified with blue filled circles. All five high eccentricity objects in the spike are iron-rich, but only seven of the fifteen low eccentricity objects are iron-rich.

The same plot as above but this time the boundary between iron rich and poor is set at 1.23 times the iron abundance of the sun, where 1.23 is from how the iron abundance is given as a logarithmic value, and the boundary here is 10^0.09=1.23. In astronomer's jargon, this is [Fe/H] = 0.09. Every single one of the 15 low eccentricity objects has iron below [Fe/H] = 0.09 (below 10^0.09), but only one of the 15 high eccentricity objects has less iron in the star.

I hope my results demonstrate how much better it would have been for the community to have helped me stay in the group. I hope that the community will help me be able to qualify for grants and employment to end my years of unemployment.

For orbits of sunlike single stars, this eccentricity as a function of period even looks to the eye that beyond the shortest periods, where orbits are circularized to lower eccentricities by tidal interaction with the star, that the eccentricities of orbits of stars more iron abundant than the sun (``iron-rich,'' red open circles) are higher at most all periods than the eccentricities of orbits of stars less iron abundant than the sun (` `iron-poor,'' blue filled circles). The exception may be in the region of the gap in counts of iron-rich orbits, from periods of 494 to 923 days. That region not only has low eccentricity orbits of iron-rich stars, it has small number of high eccentricity orbits of iron-poor stars that might not have a significant of objects here, were it not for how there are more such ``high eccentricity iron-poor objects'' in the larger population (where I use the term ``object'' to mean the parameters of the planet, star, and their orbit collectively).

Here, the eccentricities versus periods of all stars are shown there are seven orbits of iron-poor stars that have eccentricities of above 0.55, and six of these seven are within a narrow period range that corresponds to the shorter period side of the gap found above. Even the eccentricities of the orbits of iron-rich stars in this gap region (494 to 923 day periods) have lower eccentricities that outside this region. 

 

Here again the eccentricities versus periods of all stars are shown but the dividing iron-abundance has been raised to 10^0.1 or 1.26 times that of the sun, which is written as [Fe/H]=0.1. The way that this spike widens to include more nearby shorter period stars adds evidence that this spike is real feature that changes gradually, In fact, it can start to be seen that there is a gradual change in eccentricity with iron abundance at most periods shorter than this spike (shorter than 500 days). That is, there are not really two distinct populations of iron-poor and rich stars that suddenly change. At longer periods, the story may be more complicated, but at the longest periods there does appear likely to be higher eccentricity orbits of more iron-rich stars but further work and possibly more data are needed to be sure.

I briefly mention what the recourse must be in cases where someone is bullied out of a group: That organization must enable the wrongly expelled scientist to have both a separate position of safety combined with the option of returning to the original group. Victims must be given two affiliations, with the cost of supporting two affiliations being an appropriate deterrent to organizations bullying people out of being a group member. I challenge the science community to support this requirement by including it in rules for eligibility for government grants. Until this reasonable requirement is established, collaborators must make it possible for ostracized scientists to not be ostracized from their larger collaborations as well, by providing data access and communication that go around the barriers that a bullying organization such as LCOGT might create to keep out randomly undesired scientists.

Conclusions

My expectation is that scientists can to participate such that they can finish they work, and that they cannot be randomly stopped by superiors without good reason. I insist that the community make it possible for me to continue contributing and learning from where I unwillingly left off. I just wanted to keep doing science. Let's work together. Stop keeping me out, and let me back in. 

I challenge the science community: Make participation possible!

Appendices to post.

I apologize that this post is a bit rough and will need to be revised, but I must get back to writing the exoplanet distribution paper.

Appendix to post: Comments explaining why ``peer review’’ must be defined to include the review of all relevant scientists, and comments on having previously issued a public request for astronomers to ``Go around the observatory’’ by enabling me to be a part of group research by setting up alternate access to LCOGT data and communication with groups to get around LCOGT ostracizing me:

I am proud of starting a program that has delivered our data towards confirmation of many planets. I hope that it is worth having these papers published with the full peer review of all the contributing authors that they publish the first complete-author versions of these papers with me, rather than trying to pass off as peer reviewed the versions printed without the first astronomer actually at the LCOGT telescopes. I ask that they support the expectation of every astronomer who goes to work at the telescope for a project that the astronomer will have full opportunity to participate in the intellectual use of that data, and that no paper be called ``published’’ until the group of authors give full chance to intellectual participate to every contributor who does everything possible to stay involved. I hope that my intellectual work on the distribution puts an end to the question of whether I have been intellectually involve in these works. I expect the science community to require these authors to stop keeping me out by saying that those papers that I have been kept off of cannot be considered to be peer reviewed papers until they are resubmitted with consultation with me. This would be my first chance to finish my intellectual contributions to them. I look forward to joining my co-author colleagues in publishing the first LCOGT papers that can confidently be said to have been fully peer reviewed. In 2013, I posted on the astro-ph “arxiv” pre-print service my request to collaborators to help me “Go around the observatory” (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.3283.pdf ). I ask that all collaborators of LCOGT recognize that LCOGT has been keeping me out of having any papers come from my hard work contributing to LCOGT, including contributing to the intellectual work of project planning. I ask these collaborators to arrange with me how I can participate in group papers to make sure that they are not part of using anyone’s work without letting them have a chance to work with the group.