The Dependence of the Mass Distribution of Exoplanets on the Spectral Class of Host Stars

Abstract—We analyze the mass distributions of exoplanets of three groups: transit planets discovered by the Kepler telescope, those found in ground-based observational programs and with the CoRoT satellite, and planets discovered in the vicinity of red dwarfs (M class) with the radial-velocity method. The dependence of the mass distributions of the Kepler transit planets on the spectral class of the host stars (F, G, and K classes) are considered. Taking into account the most significant factors of observational selection, which are different for each of the groups of planets, it has been shown that the mass distributions of exoplanets can be described by a universal power law with the index close to −2: dN/dm ∝ m⁻². For the planets orbiting the stars of different spectral classes (F, G, K, and M), no statistically significant difference has been found.