Abstract
We present Kepler exoplanet occurrence rates for planets between 0.5 and 16
R
⊕
and between 1 and 400 days. To measure occurrence, we use a nonparametric method via a kernel density ...estimator and use bootstrap random sampling for uncertainty estimation. We use a full characterization of completeness and reliability measurements from the Kepler Data Release 25 catalog, including detection efficiency, vetting completeness, astrophysical reliability, and false alarm reliability. We also include more accurate and homogeneous stellar radii from Gaia Data Release 2. In order to see the impact of these final Kepler properties, we revisit benchmark exoplanet occurrence rate measurements from the literature. We compare our measurements with previous studies to both validate our method and observe the dependence of these benchmarks on updated stellar and planet properties. For FGK stars, between 0.5 and 16
R
⊕
and between 1 and 400 days, we find an occurrence of 1.52 ± 0.08 planets per star. We investigate the dependence of occurrence as a function of radius, orbital period, and stellar type and compare with previous studies with excellent agreement. We measure the minimum of the radius valley to be
1.78
−
0.16
+
0.14
R
⊕
for FGK stars and find it to move to smaller radii for cooler stars. We also present new measurements of the slope of the occurrence cliff at 3–4
R
⊕
, and find that the cliff becomes less steep at long orbital period. Our methodology will enable us to constrain theoretical models of planet formation and evolution in the future.
Two of Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite's major science goals are to measure masses for 50 planets smaller than 4 Earth radii and to discover high-quality targets for atmospheric ...characterization efforts. It is important that these two goals are linked by quantifying what precision of mass constraint is required to yield robust atmospheric properties of planets. Here, we address this by conducting retrievals on simulated James Webb Space Telescope transmission spectra under various assumptions for the degree of uncertainty in the planets mass for a representative population of seven planets ranging from terrestrials to warm Neptunes to hot Jupiters. Only for the cloud-free, low-metallicity gas giants are we able to infer exoplanet mass from transmission spectroscopy alone, to ∼10% accuracy. For low-metallicity cases (<4× solar) we are able to accurately constrain atmospheric properties without prior knowledge of the planet's mass. For all other cases (including terrestrial-like planets), atmospheric properties can only be inferred with a mass precision of better than 50%. At this level, though, the widths of the posterior distributions of the atmospheric properties are dominated by the uncertainties in mass. With a precision of 20%, the widths of the posterior distributions are dominated by the spectroscopic data quality. Therefore, as a rule of thumb, we recommend a 50% mass precision for initial atmospheric characterization and a 20% mass precision for more detailed atmospheric analyses.
ABSTRACT We present astrophysical false positive probability calculations for every Kepler Object of Interest (KOI)-the first large-scale demonstration of a fully automated transiting planet ...validation procedure. Out of 7056 KOIs, we determine that 1935 have probabilities <1% of being astrophysical false positives, and thus may be considered validated planets. Of these, 1284 have not yet been validated or confirmed by other methods. In addition, we identify 428 KOIs that are likely to be false positives, but have not yet been identified as such, though some of these may be a result of unidentified transit timing variations. A side product of these calculations is full stellar property posterior samplings for every host star, modeled as single, binary, and triple systems. These calculations use vespa, a publicly available Python package that is able to be easily applied to any transiting exoplanet candidate.
Abstract
The Kepler mission enabled us to look at the intrinsic population of exoplanets within our galaxy. In period-radius space, the distribution of the intrinsic population of planets contains ...structure that can trace planet formation and evolution history. The most distinctive feature in period-radius space is the radius cliff, a steep drop-off in occurrence between 2.5 and 4
R
⊕
across all period ranges, separating the sub-Neptune population from the rarer Neptunes orbiting within 1 au. Following our earlier work to measure the occurrence rate of the Kepler population, we characterize the shape of the radius cliff as a function of orbital period (10–300 days) as well as insolation flux (9500
S
⊕
–10
S
⊕
). The shape of the cliff flattens at longer orbital periods, tracking the rising population of Neptune-sized planets. In insolation, however, the radius cliff is both less dramatic and the slope is more uniform. The difference in this feature between period space and insolation space can be linked to the effect of EUV/X-ray versus bolometric flux in the planet’s evolution. Models of atmospheric mass loss processes that predict the location and shape of the radius valley also predict the radius cliff. We compare our measured occurrence rate distribution to population synthesis models of photoevaporation and core-powered mass loss in order to constrain formation and evolution pathways. We find that the models do not statistically agree with our occurrence distributions of the radius cliff in period space or insolation space. Atmospheric mass loss that shapes the radius valley cannot fully explain the shape of the radius cliff.
The determination of exoplanet properties and occurrence rates using Kepler data critically depends on our knowledge of the fundamental properties (such as temperature, radius, and mass) of the ...observed stars. We present revised stellar properties for 197,096 Kepler targets observed between Quarters 1-17 (Q1-17), which were used for the final transiting planet search run by the Kepler Mission (Data Release 25, DR25). Similar to the Q1-16 catalog by Huber et al., the classifications are based on conditioning published atmospheric parameters on a grid of Dartmouth isochrones, with significant improvements in the adopted method and over 29,000 new sources for temperatures, surface gravities, or metallicities. In addition to fundamental stellar properties, the new catalog also includes distances and extinctions, and we provide posterior samples for each stellar parameter of each star. Typical uncertainties are ∼27% in radius, ∼17% in mass, and ∼51% in density, which is somewhat smaller than previous catalogs because of the larger number of improved constraints and the inclusion of isochrone weighting when deriving stellar posterior distributions. On average, the catalog includes a significantly larger number of evolved solar-type stars, with an increase of 43.5% in the number of subgiants. We discuss the overall changes of radii and masses of Kepler targets as a function of spectral type, with a particular focus on exoplanet host stars.
ABSTRACT The NASA Kepler mission ha s discovered thousands of new planetary candidates, many of which have been confirmed through follow-up observations. A primary goal of the mission is to determine ...the occurrence rate of terrestrial-size planets within the Habitable Zone (HZ) of their host stars. Here we provide a list of HZ exoplanet candidates from the Kepler Q1-Q17 Data Release 24 data-vetting process. This work was undertaken as part of the Kepler HZ Working Group. We use a variety of criteria regarding HZ boundaries and planetary sizes to produce complete lists of HZ candidates, including a catalog of 104 candidates within the optimistic HZ and 20 candidates with radii less than two Earth radii within the conservative HZ. We cross-match our HZ candidates with the stellar properties and confirmed planet properties from Data Release 25 to provide robust stellar parameters and candidate dispositions. We also include false-positive probabilities recently calculated by Morton et al. for each of the candidates within our catalogs to aid in their validation. Finally, we performed dynamical analysis simulations for multi-planet systems that contain candidates with radii less than two Earth radii as a step toward validation of those systems.
The Kepler mission is uniquely suited to study the frequencies of extrasolar planets. This goal requires knowledge of the incidence of false positives such as eclipsing binaries in the background of ...the targets, or physically bound to them, which can mimic the photometric signal of a transiting planet. Using real noise level estimates, we compute the number and characteristics of detectable eclipsing pairs involving main-sequence stars and non-main-sequence stars or planets, and we quantify the fraction of those that would pass the Kepler candidate vetting procedure. By comparing their distribution with that of the Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs) detected during the first six quarters of operation of the spacecraft, we infer the false positive rate of Kepler and study its dependence on spectral type, candidate planet size, and orbital period. In the process, we also derive a prescription for the signal recovery rate of Kepler that enables a good match to both the KOI size and orbital period distribution, as well as their signal-to-noise distribution.
Future NASA concept missions that are currently under study, like the Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx) and the Large Ultra-violet Optical Infra Red Surveyor, could discover a large ...diversity of exoplanets. We propose here a classification scheme that distinguishes exoplanets into different categories based on their size and incident stellar flux, for the purpose of providing the expected number of exoplanets observed (yield) with direct imaging missions. The boundaries of this classification can be computed using the known chemical behavior of gases and condensates at different pressures and temperatures in a planetary atmosphere. In this study, we initially focus on condensation curves for sphalerite ZnS, H 2 O , CO 2 , and CH 4 . The order in which these species condense in a planetary atmosphere define the boundaries between different classes of planets. Broadly, the planets are divided into rocky planets (0.5-1.0 R⊕), super-Earths (1.0-1.75 R⊕), sub-Neptunes (1.75-3.5 R⊕), sub-Jovians (3.5-6.0 R⊕), and Jovians (6-14.3 R⊕) based on their planet sizes, and "hot," "warm," and "cold" based on the incident stellar flux. We then calculate planet occurrence rates within these boundaries for different kinds of exoplanets, planet, using the community coordinated results of NASA's Exoplanet Program Analysis Group's Science Analysis Group-13 (SAG-13). These occurrence rate estimates are in turn used to estimate the expected exoplanet yields for direct imaging missions of different telescope diameters.
ABSTRACT We present the seventh Kepler planet candidate (PC) catalog, which is the first catalog to be based on the entire, uniformly processed 48-month Kepler data set. This is the first fully ...automated catalog, employing robotic vetting procedures to uniformly evaluate every periodic signal detected by the Q1-Q17 Data Release 24 (DR24) Kepler pipeline. While we prioritize uniform vetting over the absolute correctness of individual objects, we find that our robotic vetting is overall comparable to, and in most cases superior to, the human vetting procedures employed by past catalogs. This catalog is the first to utilize artificial transit injection to evaluate the performance of our vetting procedures and to quantify potential biases, which are essential for accurate computation of planetary occurrence rates. With respect to the cumulative Kepler Object of Interest (KOI) catalog, we designate 1478 new KOIs, of which 402 are dispositioned as PCs. Also, 237 KOIs dispositioned as false positives (FPs) in previous Kepler catalogs have their disposition changed to PC and 118 PCs have their disposition changed to FPs. This brings the total number of known KOIs to 8826 and PCs to 4696. We compare the Q1-Q17 DR24 KOI catalog to previous KOI catalogs, as well as ancillary Kepler catalogs, finding good agreement between them. We highlight new PCs that are both potentially rocky and potentially in the habitable zone of their host stars, many of which orbit solar-type stars. This work represents significant progress in accurately determining the fraction of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. The full catalog is publicly available at the NASA Exoplanet Archive.
Abstract
Understanding planet formation requires robust population studies, which are designed to reveal trends in planet properties. In this work we aim to determine if and how different methods for ...selecting populations of exoplanets for atmospheric characterization with JWST could influence population-level inferences. We generate three hypothetical surveys of super-Earths/sub-Neptunes, with each survey designed to span a similar radius-insolation flux space. The survey samples are constructed based on three different selection criteria (evenly spaced by eye, binned, and a quantitative selection function). Using an injection-recovery technique, we test how robustly individual-planet atmospheric parameters and population-level parameters can be retrieved. We find that all three survey designs result in equally suitable targets for individual atmospheric characterization, but not equally suitable targets for constraining population parameters. Only samples constructed with a quantitative method or that are sufficiently evenly spaced-by-eye result in robust population parameter constraints. Furthermore, we find that the sample with the best targets for individual atmospheric study does not necessarily result in the best-constrained population parameters. The method of sample selection must be considered. We also find that there may be large variability in population-level results with a sample that is small enough to fit in a single JWST cycle (∼12 planets), suggesting that the most successful population-level analyses will be multicycle. Lastly, we infer that our exploration of sample selection is limited by the small number of transiting planets with measured masses around bright stars. Our results can guide future development of programs that aim to determine underlying trends in exoplanet-atmospheric properties, and, by extension, formation and evolution processes.
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