116 research outputs found
Time variation of Kepler transits induced by stellar spots - a way to distinguish between prograde and retrograde motion. II. Application to KOIs
Mazeh, Holczer, and Shporer (2015) have presented an approach that can, in
principle, use the derived transit timing variation (TTV) of some transiting
planets observed by the mission to distinguish between prograde and
retrograde motion of their orbits with respect to their parent stars' rotation.
The approach utilizes TTVs induced by spot-crossing events that occur when the
planet moves across a spot on the stellar surface, looking for a correlation
between the derived TTVs and the stellar brightness derivatives at the
corresponding transits. This can work even in data that cannot temporally
resolve the spot-crossing events themselves. Here we apply this approach to the
KOIs, identifying nine systems where the photometric spot modulation
is large enough and the transit timing accurate enough to allow detection of a
TTV-brightness-derivatives correlation. Of those systems five show highly
significant prograde motion (Kepler-17b, Kepler-71b, KOI-883.01, KOI-895.01,
and KOI-1074.01), while no system displays retrograde motion, consistent with
the suggestion that planets orbiting cool stars have prograde motion. All five
systems have impact parameter , and all systems
within that impact parameter range show significant correlation, except
HAT-P-11b where the lack of a correlation follows its large stellar obliquity.
Our search suffers from an observational bias against detection of high impact
parameter cases, and the detected sample is extremely small. Nevertheless, our
findings may suggest that stellar spots, or at least the larger ones, tend to
be located at a low stellar latitude, but not along the stellar equator,
similar to the Sun.Comment: V2: accepted to Ap
Transit Timing Observations from Kepler. VIII Catalog of Transit Timing Measurements of the First Twelve Quarters
Following Ford et al. (2011, 2012) and Steffen et al. (2012) we derived the
transit timing of 1960 Kepler KOIs using the pre-search data conditioning (PDC)
light curves of the first twelve quarters of the Kepler data. For 721 KOIs with
large enough SNRs, we obtained also the duration and depth of each transit. The
results are presented as a catalog for the community to use. We derived a few
statistics of our results that could be used to indicate significant
variations. Including systems found by previous works, we have found 130 KOIs
that showed highly significant TTVs, and 13 that had short-period TTV
modulations with small amplitudes. We consider two effects that could cause
apparent periodic TTV - the finite sampling of the observations and the
interference with the stellar activity, stellar spots in particular. We briefly
discuss some statistical aspects of our detected TTVs. We show that the TTV
period is correlated with the orbital period of the planet and with the TTV
amplitude.Comment: Accepted for publication to ApJ. 57 pages, 23 Figures. Machine
readable catalogs are available at ftp://wise-ftp.tau.ac.il/pub/tauttv/TT
The K2-ESPRINT Project III: A Close-in Super-Earth around a Metal-rich Mid-M Dwarf
We validate a planet on a close-in orbit
( days) around K2-28 (EPIC 206318379), a metal-rich
M4-type dwarf in the Campaign 3 field of the K2 mission. Our follow-up
observations included multi-band transit observations from the optical to the
near infrared, low-resolution spectroscopy, and high-resolution adaptive-optics
(AO) imaging. We perform a global fit to all the observed transits using a
Gaussian process-based method and show that the transit depths in all passbands
adopted for the ground-based transit follow-ups () are within of the K2 value. Based on a model of
the background stellar population and the absence of nearby sources in our AO
imaging, we estimate the probability that a background eclipsing binary could
cause a false positive to be . We also show that K2-28
cannot have a physically associated companion of stellar type later than M4,
based on the measurement of almost identical transit depths in multiple
passbands. There is a low probability for a M4 dwarf companion (), but even if this were the case, the size of K2-28b
falls within the planetary regime. K2-28b has the same radius (within
) and experiences a similar irradiation from its host star as the
well-studied GJ~1214b. Given the relative brightness of K2-28 in the near
infrared ( mag and mag) and relatively deep
transit (), a comparison between the atmospheric properties of these
two planets with future observations would be especially interesting.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted to Ap
Design and characterization of alkoxy-wrapped push–pull porphyrins for dye-sensitized solar cells
Three alkoxy-wrapped push–pull porphyrins were designed and synthesized for dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) applications. Spectral, electrochemical, photovoltaic and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy properties of these porphyrin sensitizers were well investigated to provide evidence for the molecular desig
KELT-7b: A hot Jupiter transiting a bright V=8.54 rapidly rotating F-star
We report the discovery of KELT-7b, a transiting hot Jupiter with a mass of
MJ, radius of RJ, and an orbital
period of days. The bright host star (HD33643;
KELT-7) is an F-star with , Teff K, [Fe/H]
, and . It has a mass of
Msun, a radius of Rsun, and
is the fifth most massive, fifth hottest, and the ninth brightest star known to
host a transiting planet. It is also the brightest star around which KELT has
discovered a transiting planet. Thus, KELT-7b is an ideal target for detailed
characterization given its relatively low surface gravity, high equilibrium
temperature, and bright host star. The rapid rotation of the star (
km/s) results in a Rossiter-McLaughlin effect with an unusually large amplitude
of several hundred m/s. We find that the orbit normal of the planet is likely
to be well-aligned with the stellar spin axis, with a projected spin-orbit
alignment of degrees. This is currently the second most
rapidly rotating star to have a reflex signal (and thus mass determination) due
to a planetary companion measured.Comment: Accepted to The Astronomical Journa
Stellar Spin-Orbit Misalignment in a Multiplanet System
Stars hosting hot Jupiters are often observed to have high obliquities,
whereas stars with multiple co-planar planets have been seen to have low
obliquities. This has been interpreted as evidence that hot-Jupiter formation
is linked to dynamical disruption, as opposed to planet migration through a
protoplanetary disk. We used asteroseismology to measure a large obliquity for
Kepler-56, a red giant star hosting two transiting co-planar planets. These
observations show that spin-orbit misalignments are not confined to hot-Jupiter
systems. Misalignments in a broader class of systems had been predicted as a
consequence of torques from wide-orbiting companions, and indeed
radial-velocity measurements revealed a third companion in a wide orbit in the
Kepler-56 system.Comment: Accepted for publication in Science, published online on October 17
2013; PDF includes main article and supplementary materials (65 pages, 27
figures, 7 tables); v2: small correction to author lis
Silicon Differential Receiver With Zero-Biased Balanced Detection for Access Networks
[EN] We present an optimized differential receiver in silicon with a minimized footprint and balanced zero-biased Ge photodiodes. The receiver integrates a delay-line with a 2 ¿ 4 multimode interferometer 90° hybrid and two balanced photodiodes for differential quadrature phase-shift keying demodulation. Two receivers are tested, for 10 and 20 Gb/s operation, and well opened eye-diagrams and symbol constellations are obtained with error vector magnitude values as low as 12.5% and 19.57%, respectively. The results confirm the potential of integrated silicon receivers to become key building blocks for future passive optical access networks based on advanced modulation formats. © 1989-2012 IEEE.This work was supported in part by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program under Grant 224312
HELIOS.Aamer, M.; Sotiropoulos, N.; Brimont, ACJ.; Fedeli, J.; Marris-Morini, D.; Cassan, E.; Vivien, L.... (2013). Silicon Differential Receiver With Zero-Biased Balanced Detection for Access Networks. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters. 25(13):1207-1210. https://doi.org/10.1109/LPT.2013.2262931S12071210251
- …