The discovery of hot Jupiters has challenged classical planet formation theories. Although various formation mechanisms have been proposed, their relative contributions remain unclear. Furthermore, hot Jupiters offer a unique opportunity to test tidal theory and measure the fundamental tidal quality factor \({Q}_{* }^{{\prime} }\) , which is yet to be well constrained. Here we use a sample of 123 hot Jupiters around single Sun-like stars and find that the slope of the decline in frequency with age abruptly changes at around 2 Gyr, indicative of the presence of two populations of hot Jupiters that formed at different timescales. We use a tidal evolution model to infer a value of \(\log {Q}_{* }^{{\prime} } \approx5.{7}_{-0.3}^{+0.4}\) for Sun-like stars, which reproduces well the number of observed hot Jupiters undergoing orbital decay. We also constrain the relative importance of the two formation channels: most hot Jupiters form within a few hundred million years through ‘early’ models (for example, in situ formation, disk migration, planet–planet scattering and Kozai–Lidov interactions), whereas a substantial portion ( \(3{8}_{-14}^{+16} \%\) ) forms late with a timescale of several billion years, mainly thorough secular chaotic migration. This result is supported by the observed obliquity distribution of ‘late-arriving’ hot Jupiters. Our findings provide a unified framework that reconciles hot Jupiter demographics and long-term evolution with multichannel formation.
