Insights Into Planet Formation From The Ages, Masses, and Elemental Abundances of Host Stars

How planetary systems form and evolve is a key question in astronomy. Revealing how host star properties, such as elemental abundances, age, and mass, differ from those of non-host stars, and how they correlate with planetary characteristics such as radius, provides new insights into the formation and evolutionary pathways of planetary systems.

We determine precise ages for 18890 dwarfs and subgiants from the LAMOST-Kepler-Gaia sample with a mean age uncertainty of about 15 percent (median about 10 percent). Within the framework of Galactic chemical evolution, we find that about 86 percent of planet-hosting stars younger than 8 Gyr occupy the upper branch ([Fe/H] > -0.2) of the characteristic V-shaped age-metallicity relation of the Galactic disk.

Based on guiding radii (Rg), we further infer that about 19 percent of these young hosts likely originated in the inner disk and subsequently migrated to the solar neighborhood. Among stars older than 10 Gyr, host stars tend to be more metal-rich, with nearly 59 percent having [Fe/H] > -0.2.

This suggests that both young and old planet-hosting stars preferentially form in relatively metal-rich environments. However, for host stars with [Fe/H] < -0.2, we find that their metallicities are on average lower by about 0.16 dex compared to non-host stars of similar age and mass, indicating that [Fe/H] is unlikely to be the dominant factor governing planet formation in metal-poor environments.

We also identify a systematic depletion of volatile elements, especially carbon, in planet hosts. Moreover, host star [Fe/H] exhibits a weak correlation with planet radius, while [alpha/Fe] primarily support the formation of small planets.

Xunzhou Chen, Tiancheng Sun, Lifei Ye

Comments: 16 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ
Subjects: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2510.10092 [astro-ph.SR] (or arXiv:2510.10092v1 [astro-ph.SR] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.10092
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Submission history
From: Xunzhou Chen
[v1] Sat, 11 Oct 2025 08:05:39 UTC (2,233 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10092

Astrobiology,