Constraining the distribution of giant planet on wide orbits from a compilation of direct imaging surveys

The direct imaging method has lead to the discovery of very interesting giant exoplanets in the last 15 years. While a large number of stars were probed in hope to find companions, only about 20 giant exoplanets were discovered. We present the first statistical analysis of exoplanet direct imaging surveys combining adaptive optics imaging at small separations with deep seeing-limited observations at large separations allowing us to study the entire orbital separation domain from 5 to 5000~au simultaneously. Overall, we find that the occurrence of companions is negatively correlated with semi-major axis and companion mass (marginally) but is positively correlated with the stellar host mass. The mass distribution we find is in good agreement with other distributions found by direct imaging surveys for planets and brown brown but is shallower than the distributions inferred by radial velocity studies of gas giants in the 1–3 au range. This may suggest that planets at these wide and very-wide separations represent the low-mass tail of the brown dwarfs and stellar companion distribution rather than an extension of the distribution of the inner planets.