Toward Detection of Terrestrial Planets in the Habitable Zone of Our Closest Neighbor: Proxima Centauri

Details Toward Detection of Terrestrial Planets in the Habitable Zone of Our Closest Neighbor: Proxima Centauri Toward Detection of Terrestrial Planets in the Habitable Zone of Our Closest Neighbor: Proxima Centauri

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....40.1121e&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #11.21; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.556

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Scientific paper

In recent years the precision of radial velocity (RV) measurements for the indirect detection of planetary companions to nearby stars has improved to a level that allowed the first discoveries of extrasolar planets in the Neptune and Super-Earth mass range. Detections of extremely low mass planets, possibly even down to 1 Earth mass or below, in short-period orbits can lie in the mid-term future of RV planet searches. Discoveries of such Earth-like planets via ground-based RV programs will help to determine the parameter eta_Earth, the frequency of potentially habitable planets around other stars. We monitored Proxima Centauri (M5V) as part of our M dwarf program in search of low-mass planetary companions. In the absence of a significant detection we want to use these data to demonstrate the general capability of the RV method to find terrestrial planets. For late M dwarfs the classic liquid surface water habitable zone (HZ) is located very close to the star, precisely where the RV method is most sensitive. We determine upper limits to the masses of companions in circular orbits via numerical simulations. As a result of our companion limit calculations we find that we successfully recover all test signals with RV amplitudes corresponding to planets with m sin i > 2-3 M_Earth residing inside the HZ of Proxima Cen with a statistical significance of >99%. Over the same period range we can recover 50% of the test planets with masses of m sin i > 1.5-2.5 M_Earth. We also discuss the effects of stellar activity on our RV measurements.

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