Disentangling stellar activity and planetary signals

Photospheric stellar activity (i.e. dark spots or bright plages) might be an important source of noise and confusion in the radial-velocity (RV) measurements. Radial-velocimetry planet search surveys as well as follow-up of photometric transit surveys require a deep understanding and precise characterization of the effects of stellar activity, in order to disentangle it from planetary signals. We simulate dark spots on a rotating stellar photosphere. The variations of the RV are characterized and analyzed according to the stellar inclination, the latitude and the number of spots. 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 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

Global results from the HARPS metal-poor sample

In this paper we present the global results of a HARPS-GTO program to search for planets orbiting a sample of metal-poor stars. The detection of several giant planets in long period orbits is discussed in the context of the metallicitygiant planet correlation

Three new massive companions in the planet-brown dwarf boundary detected with SOPHIE

We report the detection of three new massive companions to mainsequence stars based on precise radial velocities obtained with the SOPHIE spectrograph, as part of an ongoing programme to search for extrasolar planets. The minimum masses of the detected companions range from around 16 Mjup to around 60 Mjup, and therefore lie at both sides of the boundary between massive extrasolar planets and brown dwarves