Revisiting The Radius Valley Across Stellar Types: A Transit-Only Analysis of M, K, G, and F Stars with Updated NASA Exoplanet Archive Data

The radius valley — a deficit of exoplanets between super-Earths and sub-Neptunes — is a key diagnostic of planet formation and atmospheric evolution.

We investigate how the radius valley depends on stellar type by analyzing an updated, transit-only sample of exoplanets from the NASA Exoplanet Archive. Planets are selected with P<100 days and divided by host spectral class (M, K, G, F).

We construct weighted radius distributions and apply statistical tests to quantify the valley depth. We recover a pronounced valley centered near ∼1.8R_⊕ for G/K stars, but shifted to ∼1.6R_⊕ for M dwarfs and ∼1.9R_⊕ for F stars.

These results support the view that the radius valley is shaped by stellar-dependent processes such as photoevaporation, core-powered mass loss, and orbital migration.

Sukdev Mahapatra

Comments: 7 Pages, 3 Figures, 2 Tables
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2509.03549 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2509.03549v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.03549
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Submission history
From: Sukdev Mahapatra
[v1] Tue, 2 Sep 2025 18:38:15 UTC (450 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03549
Astrobiology, exoplanet,