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An adolescent and near-resonant planetary system near the end of photoevaporation

Nature Astronomy (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

Young exoplanets provide vital insights into the early dynamical and atmospheric evolution of planetary systems. Many multi-planet systems younger than 100 Myr exhibit mean-motion resonances, probably established through convergent disk migration. Over time, however, these resonant chains are often disrupted, mirroring the Nice model proposed for the Solar System. Here we present a detailed characterization of the ~200-Myr-old TOI-2076 system, which contains four sub-Neptune planets between 1.4 and 3.5 Earth radii. We demonstrate that its planets are near to but not locked in mean-motion resonances, making the system dynamically fragile. The four planets have comparable core masses but display a monotonic increase in hydrogen and helium (H/He) envelope mass fractions (from stripped to 1%, 5% and 5%) with decreasing stellar insolation. This trend is consistent with atmospheric mass loss due to photoevaporation, which predicts that the envelopes of irradiated planets either erode completely or stabilize at a residual level of ~1% by mass within the first few hundred million years, with more distant, less-irradiated planets retaining most of their primordial envelopes. Additionally, previous detections of metastable helium outflows rule out a pure water-world scenario for the TOI-2076 planets. Our finding provides direct observational evidence that the dynamical and atmospheric reshaping of compact planetary systems begins early and offers an empirical anchor for models of their long-term evolution.

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Fig. 1: TTVs and RV observations and measured masses and radii of the TOI-2076 planets.
Fig. 2: MMR diagram of TOI-2076 planets.
Fig. 3: XUV-driven photoevaporative mass-loss evolution of the TOI-2076 planets.
Fig. 4: Comparison of planetary radii and orbital periods for V1298 Tau, TOI-2076 and TOI-178.

Data availability

TESS data can be obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes102. HARPS RV data can be accessed at ref. 103. Keck and APF RV data, along with other data that can reproduce the figures in the text are archived in ref. 104. Other data products not included in these archives can be obtained from M.W. upon reasonable request.

Code availability

This study makes use of the following publicly available packages: rebound85 (https://github.com/hannorein/rebound), jnkepler105 (https://github.com/kemasuda/jnkepler) and emcee87 (https://github.com/dfm/emcee). MESA scripts for the atmosphere evolution track will be provided upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Owen, R. Murray-Clay, E. Agol, Y. Chachan, K. Masuda, H. Knuston and M. Zhang for helpful feedback and discussions on the paper. This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2024YFA1611801) and science research grants from the China Manned Space Project (Project No. CMSCSST-2025-A16). M.-T.W. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 124B2058). M.G. acknowledges support from the ERC (Grant No. 101019380, HolyEarth). This work has been carried out within the framework of the NCCR PlanetS supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 51NF40_182901 and 51NF40_205606). A.L. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No. TMSGI2_211697). Y.A. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No. 200020_192038). S.S. acknowledges support from FCT (Contract Nos. CEECIND/00826/2018 and POPH/FSE (EC)). The Portuguese team thanks the Portuguese Space Agency for financial support via the PRODEX Programme of the European Space Agency (Contract No. 4000142255). A.B. was supported by the SNSA. P.M. acknowledges support from STFC research grant ST/R000638/1. M.G.B. and A.W.M. acknowledge support from NASA’s exoplanet research programme (Grant No. 80NSSC25K7148). M.G.B. also acknowledges support from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (DGE-2040435). We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the ERDF ‘A way of making Europe’ through project PID2021-125627OB-C32, and from the Centre of Excellence ‘Severo Ochoa’ award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Mu-Tian Wang & Hui-Gen Liu

  2. Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Mu-Tian Wang & Hui-Gen Liu

  3. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai‘i, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Mu-Tian Wang & Fei Dai

  4. Department of Aerospace, Physics, and Space Sciences, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL, USA

    Howard Chen

  5. Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration (SEEC), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Howard Chen

  6. Department of Astronomy, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Zhecheng Hu

  7. Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Erik Petigura

  8. Department of Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Steven Giacalone

  9. Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Eve Lee

  10. Laboratoire Lagrange, Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Nice, France

    Max Goldberg

  11. Observatoire astronomique, Université de Genève, Versoix, Switzerland

    Adrien Leleu

  12. Space Research and Planetary Sciences, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Adrien Leleu, Yann Alibert & Andrea Fortier

  13. Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Andrew W. Mann & Madyson G. Barber

  14. Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Joshua N. Winn

  15. Center for Astrophysics ∣ Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Karen A. Collins, Cristilyn N. Watkins, Richard P. Schwarz & Howard M. Relles

  16. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Union College, Schenectady, NY, USA

    Francis P. Wilkin & Alexia Goldenberg

  17. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), La Laguna, Spain

    Enric Palle & Felipe Murgas

  18. Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), La Laguna, Spain

    Enric Palle & Felipe Murgas

  19. Department of Physics and Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Avi Shporer

  20. South African Astronomical Observatory, Cape Town, South Africa

    Ramotholo Sefako

  21. SUPA Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, Fife, UK

    Keith Horne

  22. Center for Space and Habitability, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Hugh P. Osborn, Yann Alibert & Andrea Fortier

  23. Department of Physics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Hugh P. Osborn

  24. Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria

    Luca Fossati

  25. Instituto de Astrofisica e Ciencias do Espaco, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Sérgio Sousa

  26. Department of Astronomy, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Alexis Brandeker

  27. Astrophysics Group, Keele University, Keele, UK

    Pierre Maxted

Authors
  1. Mu-Tian Wang
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  2. Fei Dai
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  3. Hui-Gen Liu
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  4. Howard Chen
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  5. Zhecheng Hu
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  6. Erik Petigura
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  7. Steven Giacalone
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  8. Eve Lee
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  9. Max Goldberg
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  10. Adrien Leleu
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  11. Andrew W. Mann
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  12. Madyson G. Barber
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  13. Joshua N. Winn
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  14. Karen A. Collins
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  15. Cristilyn N. Watkins
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  16. Richard P. Schwarz
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  17. Howard M. Relles
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  18. Francis P. Wilkin
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  19. Enric Palle
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  20. Felipe Murgas
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  21. Avi Shporer
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  22. Ramotholo Sefako
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  23. Keith Horne
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  24. Hugh P. Osborn
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  26. Luca Fossati
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  27. Andrea Fortier
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  28. Sérgio Sousa
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  29. Alexis Brandeker
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  30. Pierre Maxted
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  31. Alexia Goldenberg
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Contributions

M.-T.W. led the data analysis and performed the photodynamical simulations. F.D. supervised the project and facilitated the dynamical modelling. H.C. conducted the planetary envelope evolution simulations. M.-T.W., F.D. and H.C. wrote the paper. M.-T.W., F.D., H.-G.L., Z.H. and M.G. contributed to the interpretation of the dynamical results. E. Petigura contributed to the discussion on the interpretation of the analytical TTV analyses. E.L. contributed to the discussion on the initial conditions of the planetary envelopes. M.G.B. and A.W.M. assisted in extracting the TESS light curves. H.-G.L., E. Petigura, E.L., A.L., J.N.W., A.W.M. and S.G. contributed to the scientific discussions and provided substantial feedback throughout the project. K.A.C. coordinated the LCO scheduling, contributed to data reduction and provided observing time. C.N.W. coordinated the Subgroup 1 observations, reduced the LCO data and wrote the paper. R.P.S., H.M.R., A.G. and F.P.W. performed the LCO data reduction. E. Palle, F.M., R.S. and K.H. contributed LCO telescope time through their respective institutions. A.S. was the principal investigator of the LCO Key Project and oversaw the coordination of the observing resources. A.L., H.P.O., Y.A., L.F., A.F., S.S., A.B. and P.M. contributed to the scheduling of CHEOPS observations and to data reduction.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Mu-Tian Wang, Fei Dai or Hui-Gen Liu.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Astronomy thanks David Armstrong and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Planetary mass and eccentricity constraints of TOI-2076 b,c,d from different observational sources.

Top: marginalized planet mass constraints from TTV (blue), RV (gray), and joint photodynamical and RV model (red). First three panels in bottom show the planet mass and eccentricity 1 and 2σ contours plot, color indexed as in top panels. Bottom rightmost panel shows the marginalized distribution of eccentricity from the joint photodynamical and RV model.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Radial velocity data modeled with Keplerian planet signal and stellar activity with Gaussian Process.

(a) An overview of RV analysis of TOI-2076 with a Gaussian process (GP) activity model over the combined HIRES (orange triangle), APF (blue circle), and HARPS (green diamond) RV series of TOI-2076, overlaid with mean prediction from GP activity model (black line). The dark and light gray region show the 1σ and 2σ uncertainty band of GP model. (b)RV residuals after subtracting the activity and planetary signals. Legends are the same as those in panel a. (c-d) zoom-in view of GP model at two observing seasons. Legends are the same as those in panel a.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–7 and Tables 1–5.

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Wang, MT., Dai, F., Liu, HG. et al. An adolescent and near-resonant planetary system near the end of photoevaporation. Nat Astron (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-026-02795-9

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