This paper presents SOAP 2.0, a new version of the Spot Oscillation And Planet (SOAP) code that estimates in a simple way the photometric and radial velocity (RV) variations induced by active ...regions. The inhibition of the convective blueshift (CB) inside active regions is considered, as well as the limb brightening effect of plages, a quadratic limb darkening law, and a realistic spot and plage contrast ratio. SOAP 2.0 shows that the activity-induced variation of plages is dominated by the inhibition of the CB effect. For spots, this effect becomes significant only for slow rotators. In addition, in the case of a major active region dominating the activity-induced signal, the ratio between the FWHM and the RV peak-to-peak amplitudes of the cross correlation function can be used to infer the type of active region responsible for the signal for stars with v sin i < or =, slant 8 kms super(-1). A ratio smaller than three implies a spot, while a larger ratio implies a plage. Using the observation of HD 189733, we show that SOAP 2.0 manages to reproduce the activity variation as well as previous simulations when a spot is dominating the activity-induced variation. In addition, SOAP 2.0 also reproduces the activity variation induced by a plage on the slowly rotating star alpha Cen B, which is not possible using previous simulations. Following these results, SOAP 2.0 can be used to estimate the signal induced by spots and plages, but also to correct for it when a major active region is dominating the RV variation.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an overview of SPIRou, the new-generation near-infrared spectropolarimeter/precision velocimeter recently installed on the 3.6-m Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). ...Starting from the two main science goals, i.e., the quest for planetary systems around nearby M dwarfs and the study of magnetized star/planet formation, we outline the instrument concept that was designed to efficiently address these forefront topics, and detail the in-lab and on-sky instrument performances measured throughout the intensive testing phase that SPIRou was submitted to before passing the final acceptance review in early 2019 and initiating science observations. With a central position among the newly started programmes, the SPIRou Legacy Survey (SLS) Large Programme was allocated 300 CFHT nights until at least mid 2022. We also briefly describe a few of the first results obtained in the various science topics that SPIRou started investigating, focusing in particular on planetary systems of nearby M dwarfs, transiting exoplanets and their atmospheres, magnetic fields of young stars, but also on alternate science goals like the atmospheres of M dwarfs and the Earth’s atmosphere. We finally conclude on the key role that SPIRou and the CFHT can play in coordination with forthcoming major facilities like the JWST, the ELTs, PLATO, and ARIEL over the decade.
Context. The evolution of lithium abundance over a star’s lifetime is indicative of transport processes operating in the stellar interior. Aims. We revisit the relationship between lithium content ...and rotation rate previously reported for cool dwarfs in the Pleiades cluster. Methods. We derive new LiI 670.8 nm equivalent width measurements from high-resolution spectra obtained for low-mass Pleiades members. We combine these new measurements with previously published ones, and use the Kepler K2 rotational periods recently derived for Pleiades cool dwarfs to investigate the lithium-rotation connection in this 125 Myr-old cluster. Results. The new data confirm the correlation between lithium equivalent width and stellar spin rate for a sample of 51 early K-type members of the cluster, where fast rotating stars are systematically lithium-rich compared to slowly rotating ones. The correlation is valid for all stars over the (J–Ks) color range 0.50–0.70 mag, corresponding to a mass range from about 0.75 to 0.90 M⊙, and may extend down to lower masses. Conclusions. We argue that the dispersion in lithium equivalent widths observed for cool dwarfs in the Pleiades cluster reflects an intrinsic scatter in lithium abundances, and suggest that the physical origin of the lithium dispersion pattern is to be found in the pre-main sequence rotational history of solar-type stars.
Photospheric stellar activity (i.e. dark spots or bright plages) might be an important source of noise and confusion in stellar radial-velocity (RV) measurements. Radial-velocimetry planet search ...surveys as well as follow-up of photometric transit surveys require a deeper understanding and characterization of the effects of stellar activities to differentiate them from planetary signals. We simulate dark spots on a rotating stellar photosphere. The variations in the photometry, RV, and spectral line shapes are characterized and analyzed according to the stellar inclination, the latitude, and the number of spots. We show that the anti-correlation between RV and bisector span, known to be a signature of activity, requires a good sampling to be resolved when there are several spots on the photosphere. The Lomb-Scargle periodograms of the RV variations induced by activity present power at the rotational period Prot of the star and its two first harmonics Prot/2 and Prot/3. Three adjusted sinusoids fixed at the fundamental period and its two-first harmonics allow us to remove about 90% of the RV jitter amplitude. We apply and validate our approach on four known active planet-host stars: HD 189733, GJ 674, CoRoT-7, and ι Hor. We succeed in fitting simultaneously activity and planetary signals on GJ674 and CoRoT-7. This simultaneous modeling of the activity and planetary parameters leads to slightly higher masses of CoRoT-7b and c of respectively, 5.7 ± 2.5 MEarth and 13.2 ± 4.1 MEarth. The larger uncertainties properly take into account the stellar active jitter. We exclude short-period low-mass exoplanets around ι Hor. For data with realistic time-sampling and white Gaussian noise, we use simulations to show that our approach is effective in distinguishing reflex-motion due to a planetary companion and stellar-activity-induced RV variations provided that 1) the planetary orbital period is not close to that of the stellar rotation or one of its two first harmonics; 2) the semi-amplitude of the planet exceeds ~ 30% of the semi-amplitude of the active signal; 3) the rotational period of the star is accurately known, and 4) the data cover more than one stellar rotational period.
Stellar-activity features such as spots can complicate the determination of planetary parameters through spectroscopic and photometric observations. The overlap of a transiting planet and a stellar ...spot, for instance, can produce anomalies in the transit light-curves that may lead to an inaccurate estimation of the transit duration, depth, and timing. These inaccuracies can for instance affect the precise derivation of the planet radius. We present the results of a quantitative study on the effects of stellar spots on high-precision transit light-curves. We show that spot anomalies can lead to an estimate of a planet radius that is 4% smaller than the real value. Likewise, the transit duration may be estimated about 4%, longer or shorter. Depending on the size and distribution of spots, anomalies can also produce transit-timing variations (TTVs) with significant amplitudes. For instance, TTVs with signal amplitudes of 200 s can be produced when the spot is completely dark and has the size of the largest Sun spot. Our study also indicates that the smallest size of a stellar spot that still has detectable effects on a high-precision transit light-curve is around 0.03 time the stellar radius for typical Kepler Telescope precision. We also show that the strategy of including more free parameters (such as transit depth and duration) in the fitting procedure to measure the transit time of each individual transit will not produce accurate results for active stars.
Aims.
SPIRou is a near-infrared (nIR) spectropolarimeter at the CFHT, covering the YJHK nIR spectral bands (980−2350 nm). We describe the development and current status of the SPIRou wavelength ...calibration in order to obtain precise radial velocities (RVs) in the nIR.
Methods.
We make use of a UNe hollow-cathode lamp and a Fabry-Pérot étalon to calibrate the pixel-wavelength correspondence for SPIRou. Different methods are developed for identifying the hollow-cathode lines, for calibrating the wavelength dependence of the Fabry-Pérot cavity width, and for combining the two calibrators.
Results.
The hollow-cathode spectra alone do not provide a sufficiently accurate wavelength solution to meet the design requirements of an internal error of < 0.45 m s
−1
, for an overall RV precision of 1 m s
−1
. However, the combination with the Fabry-Pérot spectra allows for significant improvements, leading to an internal error of ∼0.15 m s
−1
. We examine the inter-night stability, intra-night stability, and impact on the stellar RVs of the wavelength solution.
While giant extrasolar planets have been studied for more than two decades now, there are still some open questions as to their dominant formation and migration processes, as well as to their ...atmospheric evolution in different stellar environments. In this paper, we study a sample of giant transiting exoplanets detected by the Kepler telescope with orbital periods up to 400 days. We first defined a sample of 129 giant-planet candidates that we followed up with the SOPHIE spectrograph (OHP, France) in a 6-year radial velocity campaign. The overall occurrence rate of giant planets within 400 days is 4.6 + or - 0.6%. We recovered, for the first time in the Kepler data, the different populations of giant planets reported by radial velocity surveys. Comparing these rates with other yields, we find that the occurrence rate of giant planets is lower only for hot Jupiters but not for the longer-period planets.
The Rossiter-McLaughlin (hereafter RM) effect is a key tool for measuring the projected spin-orbit angle between stellar spin axes and orbits of transiting planets. However, the measured radial ...velocity (RV) anomalies produced by this effect are not intrinsic and depend on both instrumental resolution and data reduction routines. Using inappropriate formulas to model the RM effect introduces biases, at least in the projected velocity Vsini⋆ compared to the spectroscopic value. Currently, only the iodine cell technique has been modeled, which corresponds to observations done by, e.g., the HIRES spectrograph of the Keck telescope. In this paper, we provide a simple expression of the RM effect specially designed to model observations done by the Gaussian fit of a cross-correlation function (CCF) as in the routines performed by the HARPS team. We derived a new analytical formulation of the RV anomaly associated to the iodine cell technique. For both formulas, we modeled the subplanet mean velocity vp and dispersion βp accurately taking the rotational broadening on the subplanet profile into account. We compare our formulas adapted to the CCF technique with simulated data generated with the numerical software SOAP-T and find good agreement up to Vsini⋆ ≲ 20 km s-1. In contrast, the analytical models simulating the two different observation techniques can disagree by about 10σ in Vsini⋆ for large spin-orbit misalignments. It is thus important to apply the adapted model when fitting data.
High-precision spectrographs play a key role in exoplanet searches and Doppler asteroseismology using the radial velocity technique. The 1 m s-1level of precision requires very high stability and ...uniformity of the illumination of the spectrograph. In fiber-fed spectrographs such as SOPHIE, the fiber-link scrambling properties are one of the main conditions for high precision. To significantly improve the radial velocity precision of the SOPHIE spectrograph, which was limited to 5–6 m s-1, we implemented a piece of octagonal-section fiber in the fiber link. We present here the scientific validation of the upgrade of this instrument, demonstrating a real improvement. The upgraded instrument, renamed SOPHIE+, reaches radial velocity precision in the range of 1–2 m s-1. It is now fully efficient for the detection of low-mass exoplanets down to 5–10 M⊕ and for the identification of acoustic modes down to a few tens of cm s-1.
In this paper, we show how tomographic imaging (Zeeman–Doppler imaging, ZDI) can be used to characterize stellar activity and magnetic field topologies, ultimately allowing us to filter out the ...radial velocity (RV) activity jitter of M dwarf moderate rotators. This work is based on spectropolarimetric observations of a sample of five weakly active early-M dwarfs (GJ 205, GJ 358, GJ 410, GJ 479, GJ 846) with HARPS-Pol and NARVAL. These stars have v sin i and RV jitters in the range 1–2 km s−1 and 2.7–10.0 m s−1 rms, respectively. Using a modified version of ZDI applied to sets of phase-resolved least-squares deconvolved profiles of unpolarized spectral lines, we are able to characterize the distribution of active regions at the stellar surfaces. We find that dark spots cover less than 2 per cent of the total surface of the stars of our sample. Our technique is efficient at modelling the rotationally modulated component of the activity jitter, and succeeds at decreasing the amplitude of this component by typical factors of 2–3 and up to 6 in optimal cases. From the rotationally modulated time series of circularly polarized spectra and with ZDI, we also reconstruct the large-scale magnetic field topology. These fields suggest that bistability of dynamo processes observed in active M dwarfs may also be at work for moderately active M dwarfs. Comparing spot distributions with field topologies suggest that dark spots causing activity jitter concentrate at the magnetic pole and/or equator, to be confirmed with future data on a larger sample.
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