The rate of planet–star coalescences due to tides and stellar evolution

Orbits of close-in planets can shrink significantly due to dissipation of tidal energy in a host star. This process can result in star–planet coalescence within the Galactic lifetime. In some cases, such events can be accompanied by an optical or/and UV/X-ray transient. Potentially, these outbursts can be observed in near future with new facilities such as LSST from distances about few Mpc. We use a population synthesis model to study this process and derive the rate of star–planet mergers of different types. Mostly, planets are absorbed by red giants. However, these events, happening with the rate about 3 per year, mostly do not produce detectable transients. The rate of mergers with main sequence stars depends on the effectiveness of tidal dissipation; for reasonable values of stellar tidal quality factor, such events happen in a Milky Way-like galaxy approximately once in 70 yr or more rarely. This rate is dominated by planets with low masses. Such events do not produce bright transients having maximum luminosities ≲ 1036.5 erg s−1. Brighter events, related to massive planets, with maximum luminosity ∼1037.5–1038 erg s−1, have the rate nearly five times smaller.