Microlensing Surveys for Exoplanets Gaudi, B. Scott
Annual review of astronomy and astrophysics,
01/2012, Letnik:
50, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Unlike most other planet-detection techniques, gravitational microlensing does not rely on detection of photons from either the host or the planet. Rather, planets are discovered by their ...gravitational perturbation of light from a more distant source. I review the fundamental concepts of microlensing planet searches and discuss their practical application. I show how the strengths and peculiarities of the method flow from the basic manner in which planets are discovered. In particular, microlensing is sensitive to very low-mass planets on wide orbits and free-floating planets, and can be used to search for planets orbiting host stars with a broad range of masses and Galactocentric distances. However, microlensing events are rare and cannot be predicted in advance, the majority of the host stars are extremely faint, and the planetary signals typically last less than a day. These strengths motivate microlensing searches as powerful, complementary probes of unexplored parameter space that have already provided important constraints on the demographics of planets beyond the "snow line." However, the real-world challenges associated with the practical application of the method have driven the organization and evolution of the microlensing field and will continue to drive future developments from next-generation ground-based experiments through possible future space-based missions.
EXOFAST: A Fast Exoplanetary Fitting Suite in IDL Eastman, Jason; Gaudi, B. Scott; Agol, Eric
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
01/2013, Letnik:
125, Številka:
923
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
ABSTRACT We present EXOFAST, a fast, robust suite of routines written in IDL that is designed to fit exoplanetary transits and radial velocity variations simultaneously or separately and characterize ...the parameter uncertainties and covariances with a differential evolution Markov chain Monte Carlo method. We describe how our code incorporates both data sets to derive simultaneously stellar parameters along with the transit and RV parameters, resulting in more self-consistent results on an example fit of the discovery data of HAT-P-3b that is well-mixed in under 5 minutes on a standard desktop computer. We describe in detail how our code works and outline ways in which the code can be extended to include additional effects or generalized for the characterization of other data sets-including non-planetary data sets. We discuss the pros and cons of several common ways to parameterize eccentricity, highlight a subtle mistake in the implementation of MCMC that could bias the inferred eccentricity of intrinsically circular orbits to significantly non-zero results, discuss a problem with IDL's built-in random number generator in its application to large MCMC fits, and derive a method to analytically fit the linear and quadratic limb darkening coefficients of a planetary transit. Finally, we explain how we achieved improved accuracy and over a factor of 100 improvement in the execution time of the transit model calculation. Our entire source code, along with an easy-to-use online interface for several basic features of our transit and radial velocity fitting, are available online at http://astroutils.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/exofast.
We present empirical measurements of the radii of 116 stars that host transiting planets. These radii are determined using only direct observables-the bolometric flux at Earth, the effective ...temperature, and the parallax provided by the Gaia first data release-and thus are virtually model independent, with extinction being the only free parameter. We also determine each star's mass using our newly determined radius and the stellar density, a virtually model independent quantity itself from previously published transit analyses. These stellar radii and masses are in turn used to redetermine the transiting-planet radii and masses, again using only direct observables. The median uncertainties on the stellar radii and masses are 8% and 30%, respectively, and the resulting uncertainties on the planet radii and masses are 9% and 22%, respectively. These accuracies are generally larger than previously published model-dependent precisions of 5% and 6% on the planet radii and masses, respectively, but the newly determined values are purely empirical. We additionally report radii for 242 stars hosting radial-velocity (non-transiting) planets, with a median achieved accuracy of 2%. Using our empirical stellar masses we verify that the majority of putative "retired A stars" in the sample are indeed more massive than ∼1.2 . Most importantly, the bolometric fluxes and angular radii reported here for a total of 498 planet host stars-with median accuracies of 1.7% and 1.8%, respectively-serve as a fundamental data set to permit the re-determination of transiting-planet radii and masses with the Gaia second data release to 3% and 5% accuracy, better than currently published precisions, and determined in an entirely empirical fashion.
ABSTRACT We present the first study to synthesize results from five different exoplanet surveys using three independent detection methods: microlensing, radial velocity, and direct imaging. The ...constraints derived herein represent the most comprehensive picture of the demographics of large-separation ( 2 AU) planets orbiting the most common stars in our Galaxy that has been constructed to date. We assume a simple, joint power-law planet distribution function of the form with an outer cutoff radius of the separation distribution function of aout. Generating populations of planets from these models and mapping them into the relevant observables for each survey, we use actual or estimated detection sensitivities to determine the expected observations for each survey. Comparing with the reported results, we derive constraints on the parameters that describe a single population of planets that is simultaneously consistent with the results of microlensing, radial velocity, and direct imaging surveys. We find median and 68% confindence intervals of ( ), ( ), ( ), and AU ( AU) assuming "hot-start" ("cold-start") planet evolutionary models. These values are consistent with all current knowledge of planets on orbits beyond ∼2 AU around single M dwarfs.
The Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is the next NASA astrophysics flagship mission, to follow the James Webb Space Telescope. The WFIRST mission was chosen as the top-priority large ...space mission of the 2010 astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey in order to achieve three primary goals: to study dark energy via a wide-field imaging survey, to study exoplanets via a microlensing survey, and to enable a guest observer program. Here we assess the ability of the several WFIRST designs to achieve the goal of the microlensing survey to discover a large sample of cold, low-mass exoplanets with semimajor axes beyond roughly one astronomical unit, which are largely impossible to detect with any other technique. We present the results of a suite of simulations that span the full range of the proposed WFIRST architectures, from the original design envisioned by the decadal survey, to the current design, which utilizes a 2.4 m telescope donated to NASA. By studying such a broad range of architectures, we are able to determine the impact of design trades on the expected yields of detected exoplanets. In estimating the yields we take particular care to ensure that our assumed Galactic model predicts microlensing event rates that match observations, consider the impact that inaccuracies in the Galactic model might have on the yields, and ensure that numerical errors in light-curve computations do not bias the yields for the smallest-mass exoplanets. For the nominal baseline WFIRST design and a fiducial planet mass function, we predict that a total of ∼1400 bound exoplanets with mass greater than ∼0.1 M⊕ should be detected, including ∼200 with mass 3 M⊕. WFIRST should have sensitivity to planets with mass down to ∼0.02 M⊕, or roughly the mass of Ganymede.
We present a methodology for the determination of empirical masses of single stars through the combination of three direct observables with Gaia and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS): (i) ...the surface gravity via granulation-driven variations in the TESS light curve, (ii) the bolometric flux at Earth via the broadband spectral energy distribution, and (iii) the distance via the Gaia parallax. We demonstrate the method using 525 Kepler stars for which these measures are available in the literature, and show that the stellar masses can be measured with this method to a precision of ∼25%, limited by the surface-gravity precision of the granulation "flicker" method (∼0.1 dex) and by the parallax uncertainties (∼10% for the Kepler sample). We explore the impact of expected improvements in the surface gravity determinations-through the application of granulation background fitting and the use of recently published granulation-metallicity relations-and improvements in the parallaxes with the arrival of the Gaia second data release. We show that the application of this methodology to stars that will be observed by TESS should yield radii good to a few percent and masses good to 10%. Importantly, the method does not require the presence of an orbiting, eclipsing, or transiting body, nor does it require spatial resolution of the stellar surface. Thus, we can anticipate the determination of fundamental, accurate stellar radii and masses for hundreds of thousands of bright single stars-across the entire sky and spanning the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram-including those that will ultimately be found to host planets.
In contrast to radial velocity (RV) surveys, results from microlensing surveys indicate that giant planets with masses greater than the critical mass for core accretion (~0.1 M sub(Jup)) are ...relatively common around low-mass stars. Using the methodology developed in the first paper, we predict the sensitivity of M-dwarf RV surveys to analogs of the population of planets inferred by microlensing. We find that RV surveys should detect a handful of super-Jovian (>M sub(Jup)) planets at the longest periods being probed. These planets are indeed found by RV surveys, implying that the demographic constraints inferred from these two methods are consistent. Finally, we combine the results from both methods to estimate planet frequencies spanning wide regions of parameter space.
Hot Jupiters (HJs), gas giant planets orbiting their host stars with periods on the order of days, commonly occur in the Galaxy, including relatively massive (1.6-2.4 M , i.e., A-type main-sequence ...stars) and evolved stars. The majority of A-type main-sequence stars have stellar binary companions, that can strongly affect the dynamical evolution of planets around either star. In this work, we investigate the effects of gravitational perturbations by a far away stellar companion on the orbital evolution of gas giant planets orbiting A-type stars, the so-called Eccentric Kozai-Lidov mechanism, including the effects of general relativity, post-main-sequence stellar evolution, and tides. We find that only 0.15% of A-type stars will host HJs during their main-sequence lifetimes. However, we also find a new class of planets, Temporary Hot Jupiters (THJs), that form during the post-main-sequence lifetime of about 3.7% of former A-type main-sequence stars. These THJs orbit on periods of tens to a hundred days and only exist for a few 100,000 years before they are engulfed, but they reach similar temperatures as "classical" HJs due to the increased stellar luminosities. THJs' spin-orbit angles will mostly be misaligned. THJ effects on the host stars' evolution could also be observable for longer than a few 100,000 years. Overall, we find that approximately 70% of all gas giant planets orbiting A-type stars will eventually be destroyed or engulfed by their star, about 25% during the main-sequence lifetime, about 45% during post-main-sequence evolution.
We present a semianalytic estimate of the expected yield of single-transit planets from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). We use the TESS Candidate Target List-6 (CTL-6) as an input ...catalog of over four million sources. We predict that from the 200,000 stars selected to be observed with the high-cadence postage stamps (PSs) with the highest CTL-6 priority, there will be 241 single-transit events caused by planets detectable at a signal-to-noise ratio of S/N ≥ 7.3. We find a lower limit of an additional 977 events caused by single-transit planets in the full frame images (FFIs); this is a lower limit because the CTL-6 is incomplete below a TESS magnitude of . Of the single-transit events from the PSs and FFIs, 1091/1218 will have transit depths deeper than 0.1% and will thus be amenable for photometric follow-up from the ground, and 1195/1218 will have radial velocity signals greater than 1 m s−1. We estimate that the periods of 146 single transits will be constrained to better than 10% using the TESS photometry assuming circular orbits. We find that the number of planets detected by TESS in the PSs with periods days can be doubled by including single-transiting planets, while the number of planets with days can be increased by an order of magnitude. We predict 79 habitable zone planets in the TESS light curves from single transits, with 18 orbiting FGK stars.
ABSTRACT A microlensing survey by Sumi et al. exhibits an overabundance of short-timescale events (STEs; tE < 2 days) relative to what is expected from known stellar populations and a smooth ...power-law extrapolation down to the brown dwarf regime. This excess has been interpreted as a population of approximately Jupiter-mass objects that outnumber main-sequence stars nearly twofold; however the microlensing data alone cannot distinguish between events due to wide-separation (a 10 au) and free-floating planets. Assuming these STEs are indeed due to planetary-mass objects, we aim to constrain the fraction of these events that can be explained by bound but wide-separation planets. We fit the observed timescale distribution with a lens mass function comprised of brown dwarfs, main-sequence stars, and stellar remnants, finding and thus corroborating the initial identification of an excess of STEs. We then include a population of bound planets that are expected not to show signatures of the primary lens (host) in their microlensing light curves and that are also consistent with results from representative microlensing, radial velocity, and direct imaging surveys. We find that bound planets alone cannot explain the entire STE excess without violating the constraints from the surveys we consider and thus some fraction of these events must be due to free-floating planets, if our model for bound planets holds. We estimate a median fraction of STEs due to free-floating planets to be f = 0.67 (0.23 ≤ f ≤ 0.85 at 95% confidence) when assuming "hot-start" planet evolutionary models and f = 0.58 (0.14 ≤ f ≤ 0.83 at 95% confidence) for "cold-start" models. Assuming a delta-function distribution of free-floating planets of mass yields a number of free-floating planets per main-sequence star of N = 1.4 (0.48 ≤ N ≤ 1.8 at 95% confidence) in the "hot-start" case and N = 1.2 (0.29 ≤ N ≤ 1.8 at 95% confidence) in the "cold-start" case.
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