The Epoch of Giant Planet Migration: A Near-Infrared RV Survey for Giant Planets Around Young Sun-like Stars

The presence of giant planets interior to the water ice lines of Sun-like stars indicates that inward orbital migration is a common phenomenon. However, the processes by which these gas giants arrived at their present-day locations are poorly constrained because previous radial velocity surveys have largely avoided young stars. Young stars have intrinsic astrophysical RV “jitter” that overwhelms planetary signals at visible wavelengths. Moving into the NIR has been shown to reduce this variability, opening the possibility of finding giant planets around young stars. We are carrying out a large precision RV survey of intermediate-age (20-200 Myr) GK dwarfs in young moving groups with the Habitable Zone Planet Finder (HPF), a stabilized high resolution, near-infrared spectrograph located at the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. The goals of this program are to determine the timescale and dominant physical mechanism of giant planet migration by measuring their occurrence rates at young ages and comparing them to established frequencies at older ages. In this talk we will present the survey design and initial results, including the first measurements of stellar jitter at J-band for a large sample of young Sun-like stars, and an overview of the first candidate planets to emerge from this program.