Probing Planet Formation around Fast-Rotating Stars with Kepler Lightcurves

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Fast-rotating stars are oblate and non-isothermal; their poles hotter than their equators in an effect known as gravity-darkening. I show here that planetary transits across such non-uniform stellar disks create unusual and distinctive lightcurves that can be used to measure the system's stellar-spin/planetary orbit alignment. Lightcurves of inclined planets should be easily detected among the 5% of Kepler target stars that are expected to be rapidly rotating. The stellar spin / planet orbit alignment bears the fingerprints of how these planets form and evolve -- spin-orbit misaligned systems may be produced by planet-planet scattering rather than orderly orbital migration. The usual method to measure spin/orbit alignment is the Rossiter-McLaughlin (R-M) effect, but inherent stellar jitter and rotationally broadened absorption lines make Rossiter-McLaughlin difficult for fast-rotating stars. Since most if not all stars earlier than mid-F spectral type are expected to be rapidly rotating, Kepler transit lightcurves represent our best opportunity for understanding the planet formation process around high-mass stars.

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