Kepler planet masses, radii and orbital periods

The Kepler mission has led to an abundance of statistical discoveries in regards to planetary radius, but the number of observed planets with measured masses is much smaller. By incorporating results from recent mass determination programs, we have discovered a new gap emerging in the planet population for sub-Neptune-mass planets with orbital periods less than 20 days.

The gap follows a slope of decreasing mass with increasing orbital period, has a width of a few M_{Earth}_, and is potentially completely devoid of planets. Fitting Gaussian mixture models to the planet population in this region favors a bimodel distribution over a unimodel one with a reduction in Bayesian information criterion of 19.9, highlighting the gap significance. We discuss several processes that could generate such a feature in the planet distribution, including a pileup of planets above the gap region, tidal interactions with the host star, dynamical interactions with the disk, with other planets, or with accreting material during the formation process.