The Mass Distribution of Extrasolar Planet-candidates and Spectroscopic-binary Low-mass Companions

Spectroscopic orbits have been reported for nine unseen companions orbiting solartype stars with minimum possible masses in the range 0.5 to 10 Jupiter masses. We compare the mass distribution of these nine planet candidates with the distribution of low-mass secondaries in spectroscopic binaries. Although we still have only a very small number of systems, the two distributions suggest two distinctive populations. The transition region between the two populations might be at the range of 10–30 Jupiter