While planet migration has been extensively studied for classical viscous discs, planet-disc interaction in nearly inviscid discs has mostly been explored with greatly simplified thermodynamics. In such environments, motivated by models of wind-driven accretion discs, even Earth-mass planets located interior to 1 au can significantly perturb the disc, carving gaps and exciting vortices on their edges. Both processes are influenced by radiative transfer, which can both drive baroclinic forcing and influence gap opening. We perform a set of high-resolution radiation hydrodynamics simulations of planet-disc interaction in the feedback and gap-opening regimes, aiming to understand the role of radiation transport in the migration of super-Earth-mass planets representative of the observed exoplanet population. We find that radiative cooling drives baroclinic forcing during multiple stages of the planet's migration in the feedback regime (), significantly delaying the onset of vortex formation at the gap edge but ultimately resulting in type-III runaway migration episodes. For super-thermal-mass planets (), radiative cooling is fundamentally linked to the gap-opening process, with the planet stalling instead of undergoing vortex-assisted migration as expected from isothermal or adiabatic models. This stalling of migration can only be captured when treating radiative effects, and since it affects super-thermal-mass planets its implications for both the final configuration of planetary systems and population synthesis modelling are potentially huge. Combining our findings with previous related studies, we present a map of migration regimes for radiative, nearly-inviscid discs, with the cooling-mediated gap-opening regime playing a central role in determining the planet's orbital properties.

Low-mass planets migrate in the type-I regime. In the inviscid limit, the contrast between the vortensity trapped inside the planet's corotating region and the background disc vortensity leads to a dynamical corotation torque, which is thought to slow down inward migration. We investigate the effect of radiative cooling on low-mass planet migration using inviscid 2D hydrodynamical simulations. We find that cooling induces a baroclinic forcing on material U-turning near the planet, resulting in vortensity growth in the corotating region, which in turn weakens the dynamical corotation torque and leads to 2-3 × faster inw ard migration. This mechanism is most efficient when cooling acts on a time-scale similar to the U-turn time of material inside the corotating region, but is none the less rele v ant for a substantial radial range in a typical disc ( R ~5-50 au). As the planet migrates inwards, the contrast between the vortensity inside and outside the corotating region increases and partially regulates the effect of baroclinic forcing. As a secondary ef fect, we sho w that radiati ve damping can further weaken the vortensity barrier created by the planet's spiral shocks, supporting inward migration. Finally, we highlight that a self-consistent treatment of radiative diffusion as opposed to local cooling is critical in order to avoid overestimating the vortensity growth and the resulting migration rate.

Low-mass planets migrating inwards in laminar protoplanetary discs (PPDs) experience a dynamical corotation torque (DCT), which is expected to slow down migration to a stall. However, baroclinic effects can reduce or even reverse this effect, leading to rapid inward migration. In the radiatively inefficient inner disc, one such mechanism is the buoyancy response of the disc to an embedded planet. Recent work has suggested that radiative cooling can quench this response, but for parameters that are not necessarily representative of the inner regions of PPDs. We perform global 3D inviscid radiation hydrodynamics simulations of planet–disc interaction to investigate the effect of radiative cooling on the buoyancy-driven torque in a more realistic disc model. We find that the buoyancy response exerts a negative DCT – albeit partially damped due to radiative cooling – resulting in sustained, rapid inward migration. Models that adopt a local cooling prescription significantly overestimate the impact of the buoyancy response, highlighting the importance of a realistic treatment of radiation transport that includes radiative diffusion. Our results suggest that low-mass planets should migrate inwards faster than has been previously expected in radiative discs, with implications for the formation and orbital distribution of super-Earths and sub-Neptunes at intermediate distances from their host stars, unless additional physical processes that can slow down migration are considered.

In radiatively inefficient, laminar protoplanetary discs, embedded planets can excite a buoyancy response as gas gets deflected vertically near the planet. This results in vertical oscillations that drive a vortensity growth in the planet's corotating region, speeding up inward migration in the type-I regime. We present a comparison between pluto/idefix and fargo3D using 3D, inviscid, adiabatic numerical simulations of planet-disc interaction that feature the buoyancy response of the disc, and show that pluto/idefix struggle to resolve higher-order modes of the buoyancy-related oscillations, weakening vortensity growth, and the associated torque. We interpret this as a drawback of total-energy-conserving finite-volume schemes. Our results indicate that a very high resolution or high-order scheme is required in shock-capturing codes in order to adequately capture this effect.