On the Orbital Evolution of Giant Planet Pair Embedded in a Gaseous Disk. III. simultaneous gas accretion and the final mass ratio

Recent exoplanet surveys reveal a systematic trend in the mass ratios of giant planet pairs. Although the $M_{outer}/M_{inner}$ is broadly centered near unity, it exhibits a dependence on orbital separation. The new analysis still awaits peer review, but it already lays out the central claim clearly.

That matters because exoplanet science has moved beyond the era of simple discovery into a period of comparative characterization. With more than five thousand confirmed planets known, the scientifically productive questions now concern atmospheric composition, internal structure, orbital history and the statistical properties of populations rather than the existence of individual worlds. A new detection or spectral measurement is most valuable when it adds a well-constrained data point to those comparative frameworks, not when it stands alone as an anecdote. Recent exoplanet surveys reveal a systematic trend in the mass ratios of giant planet pairs ($> 30 M_\oplus$). Although the $M_{outer}/M_{inner}$ is broadly centered near unity, it exhibits a dependence on orbital separation.

Compact pairs tend to have comparable masses, whereas widely separated pairs show outer-heavy configurations. To investigate the origin of this trend, we perform two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations that couple gas accretion and orbital migration of two giant planet embryos with.

We explore the effects of disk viscosity, surface density slope, and initial mass ratio on the coupled evolution of planetary growth and migration. We find that convergent migration drives the planets to open a common gap, restructuring the gas flow.

This configuration induces asymmetric accretion, in which the inner planet becomes starved as gap clearing suppresses its gas supply, while the outer planet continues to accrete. Consequently, the system naturally evolves toward mass-ratio convergence, and in many cases produces an inversion of the initial core-mass hierarchy.

The broader interest lies in making the target less anecdotal and more comparable with the rest of the known planetary population. Population-level questions, such as the frequency of atmospheres around small rocky planets or the prevalence of water-rich worlds in the habitable zone, require well-characterized individual data points before statistical patterns become meaningful. Each new planet with a measured radius, mass and, ideally, atmospheric constraint is a brick in that larger structure, and the accumulation of bricks eventually allows theorists to test formation models against real distributions rather than projections.

We further show that migration outcomes are highly sensitive to initial conditions. Systems with initially more massive inner cores tend to diverge, whereas steeper surface density profiles and more massive outer cores favor convergent migration and subsequent.

Because this is still a preprint, the result should be read with genuine interest and proportionate caution. Peer review is not a guarantee of correctness, but it is a process that forces authors to respond to technical criticism from specialists who have no stake in a particular outcome. Preprints that survive that process, often with substantive revisions, emerge with a stronger evidential base than the version that first appeared. Until that stage is complete, the responsible reading keeps uncertainty explicitly visible rather than treating the claims as established findings.

The next step is to improve independent constraints on the mass, radius, atmospheric composition and orbital dynamics of the target. Transmission spectroscopy with JWST, radial velocity campaigns with high-resolution ground-based spectrographs and phase-curve measurements from space photometry represent the observational toolkit that can move characterization from plausible to robust. That convergence of techniques is the standard the community now expects before a planetary atmosphere result is treated as confirmed. Until peer review and independent follow-up address those open questions, skepticism is not a failure of appreciation for the work; it is part of how science decides what to keep.

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