38,334 research outputs found
Line-profile variations in radial-velocity measurements: Two alternative indicators for planetary searches
Aims. We introduce two methods to identify false-positive planetary signals
in the context of radial-velocity exoplanet searches. The first is the
bi-Gaussian cross-correlation function fitting, and the second is the
measurement of asymmetry in radial-velocity spectral line information content,
Vasy.
Methods. We make a systematic analysis of the most used common line profile
diagnosis, Bisector Inverse Slope and Velocity Span, along with the two
proposed ones. We evaluate all these diagnosis methods following a set of
well-defined common criteria and using both simulated and real data. We apply
them to simulated cross-correlation functions created with the program SOAP and
which are affected by the presence of stellar spots, and to real
cross-correlation functions, calculated from HARPS spectra, for stars with a
signal originating both in activity and created by a planet.
Results. We demonstrate that the bi-Gaussian method allows a more precise
characterization of the deformation of line profiles than the standard bisector
inverse slope. The calculation of the deformation indicator is simpler and its
interpretation more straightforward. More importantly, its amplitude can be up
to 30% larger than that of the bisector span, allowing the detection of
smaller-amplitude correlations with radial-velocity variations. However, a
particular parametrization of the bisector inverse slope is shown to be more
efficient on high-signal-to-noise data than both the standard bisector and the
bi-Gaussian. The results of the Vasy method show that this indicator is more
effective than any of the previous ones, being correlated with the
radial-velocity with more significance for signals resulting from a line
deformation. Moreover, it provides a qualitative advantage over the bisector,
showing significant correlations with RV for active stars for which bisector
analysis is inconclusive. (abridged)Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysics, comments welcom
Probing the effect of gravitational microlensing on the measurements of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect
In general, in the studies of transit light-curves and the
Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM), the contribution of the planet's gravitational
microlensing is neglected. Theoretical studies, have, however shown that the
planet's microlensing can affect the transit light-curve and in some extreme
cases cause the transit depth to vanish. In this letter, we present the results
of our quantitative analysis of microlening on the RM effect. Results indicate
that for massive planets in on long period orbits, the planet's microlensing
will have considerable contribution to the star's RV measurements. We present
the details of our study, and discuss our analysis and results.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
Impact of stellar companions on precise radial velocities
Context: With the announced arrival of instruments such as ESPRESSO one can
expect that several systematic noise sources on the measurement of precise
radial velocity will become the limiting factor instead of photon noise. A
stellar companion within the fiber is such a possible noise source. Aims: With
this work we aim at characterizing the impact of a stellar companion within the
fiber to radial velocity measurements made by fiber-fed spectrographs. We
consider the contaminant star either to be part of a binary system whose
primary star is the target star, or as a background/foreground star. Methods:
To carry out our study, we used HARPS spectra, co-added the target with
contaminant spectra, and then compared the resulting radial velocity with that
obtained from the original target spectrum. We repeated this procedure and used
different tunable knobs to reproduce the previously mentioned scenarios.
Results: We find that the impact on the radial velocity calculation is a
function of the difference between individual radial velocities, of the
difference between target and contaminant magnitude, and also of their spectral
types. For the worst-case scenario in which both target and contaminant star
are well centered on the fiber, the maximum contamination for a G or K star may
be higher than 10 cm/s, on average, if the difference between target and
contaminant magnitude is < 10, and higher than 1 m/s if <
8. If the target star is of spectral type M, < 8 produces the same
contamination of 10 cm/s, and a contamination may be higher than 1 m/sComment: Accepted for publication in A&A on 29/12/2019 - 14 page
Revisiting the correlation between stellar activity and planetary surface gravity
Aims: We re-evaluate the correlation between planetary surface gravity and
stellar host activity as measured by the index log(). This
correlation, previously identified by Hartman (2010), is now analyzed in light
of an extended measurements dataset, roughly 3 times larger than the original
one.
Methods: We calculated the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient between
the two quantities and its associated p-value. The correlation coefficient was
calculated for both the full dataset and the star-planet pairs that follow the
conditions proposed by Hartman (2010). In order to do so, we considered
effective temperatures both as collected from the literature and from the
SWEET-Cat catalog, which provides a more homogeneous and accurate effective
temperature determination.
Results: The analysis delivers significant correlation coefficients, but with
a lower value than those obtained by Hartman (2010). Yet, the two datasets are
compatible, and we show that a correlation coefficient as large as previously
published can arise naturally from a small-number statistics analysis of the
current dataset. The correlation is recovered for star-planet pairs selected
using the different conditions proposed by Hartman (2010). Remarkably, the
usage of SWEET-Cat temperatures leads to larger correlation coefficient values.
We highlight and discuss the role of the correlation betwen different
parameters such as effective temperature and activity index. Several additional
effects on top of those discussed previously were considered, but none fully
explains the detected correlation. In light of the complex issue discussed
here, we encourage the different follow-up teams to publish their activity
index values in the form of log() index so that a comparison across
stars and instruments can be pursued.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in A&
Dark Matter directional detection: comparison of the track direction determination
Several directional techniques have been proposed for a directional detection
of Dark matter, among others anisotropic crystal detectors, nuclear emulsion
plates, and low-pressure gaseous TPCs. The key point is to get access to the
initial direction of the nucleus recoiling due to the elastic scattering by a
WIMP. In this article, we aim at estimating, for each method, how the
information of the recoil track initial direction is preserved in different
detector materials. We use the SRIM simulation code to emulate the motion of
the first recoiling nucleus in each material. We propose the use of a new
observable, D, to quantify the preservation of the initial direction of the
recoiling nucleus in the detector. We show that in an emulsion mix and an
anisotropic crystal, the initial direction is lost very early, while in a
typical TPC gas mix, the direction is well preserved.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
Can stellar activity make a planet seem misaligned?
Several studies have shown that the occultation of stellar active regions by
the transiting planet can generate anomalies in the high-precision transit
light curves, and these anomalies may lead to an inaccurate estimate of the
planetary parameters (e.g., the planet radius). Since the physics and geometry
behind the transit light curve and the Rossiter- McLaughlin effect
(spectroscopic transit) are the same, the Rossiter-McLaughlin observations are
expected to be affected by the occultation of stellar active regions in a
similar way. In this paper we perform a fundamental test on the spin-orbit
angles as derived by Rossiter-McLaughlin measurements, and we examine the
impact of the occultation of stellar active regions by the transiting planet on
the spin-orbit angle estimations. Our results show that the inaccurate
estimation on the spin-orbit angle due to stellar activity can be quite
significant (up to 30 degrees), particularly for the edge-on, aligned, and
small transiting planets. Therefore, our results suggest that the aligned
transiting planets are the ones that can be easily misinterpreted as misaligned
owing to the stellar activity. In other words, the biases introduced by
ignoring stellar activity are unlikely to be the culprit for the highly
misaligned systems.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
Further constraints on the optical transmission spectrum of HAT-P-1b
We report on novel observations of HAT-P-1 aimed at constraining the optical
transmission spectrum of the atmosphere of its transiting Hot-Jupiter
exoplanet. Ground-based differential spectrophotometry was performed over two
transit windows using the DOLORES spectrograph at the Telescopio Nazionale
Galileo (TNG). Our measurements imply an average planet to star radius ratio
equal to =(0.11590.0005). This result is consistent
with the value obtained from recent near infrared measurements of this object
but differs from previously reported optical measurements being lower by around
4.4 exoplanet scale heights. Analyzing the data over 5 different spectral bins
600\AA wide we observed a single peaked spectrum (3.7 level)
with a blue cut-off corresponding to the blue edge of the broad absorption wing
of sodium and an increased absorption in the region in between 6180-7400\AA. We
also infer that the width of the broad absorption wings due to alkali metals is
likely narrower than the one implied by solar abundance clear atmospheric
models. We interpret the result as evidence that HAT-P-1b has a partially clear
atmosphere at optical wavelengths with a more modest contribution from an
optical absorber than previously reported.Comment: Accepted by Ap
Impact of micro-telluric lines on precise radial velocities and its correction
Context: In the near future, new instruments such as ESPRESSO will arrive,
allowing us to reach a precision in radial-velocity measurements on the order
of 10 cm/s. At this level of precision, several noise sources that until now
have been outweighed by photon noise will start to contribute significantly to
the error budget. The telluric lines that are not neglected by the masks for
the radial velocity computation, here called micro-telluric lines, are one such
noise source. Aims: In this work we investigate the impact of micro-telluric
lines in the radial velocities calculations. We also investigate how to correct
the effect of these atmospheric lines on radial velocities. Methods: The work
presented here follows two parallel lines. First, we calculated the impact of
the micro-telluric lines by multiplying a synthetic solar-like stellar spectrum
by synthetic atmospheric spectra and evaluated the effect created by the
presence of the telluric lines. Then, we divided HARPS spectra by synthetic
atmospheric spectra to correct for its presence on real data and calculated the
radial velocity on the corrected spectra. When doing so, one considers two
atmospheric models for the synthetic atmospheric spectra: the LBLRTM and TAPAS.
Results: We find that the micro-telluric lines can induce an impact on the
radial velocities calculation that can already be close to the current
precision achieved with HARPS, and so its effect should not be neglected,
especially for future instruments such as ESPRESSO. Moreover, we find that the
micro-telluric lines' impact depends on factors, such as the radial velocity of
the star, airmass, relative humidity, and the barycentric Earth radial velocity
projected along the line of sight at the time of the observation.Comment: Accepted in A&
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