Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21340307m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #403.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.194
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We investigate an in-situ formation scenario for Earth-mass terrestrial planets in short-period, potentially habitable orbits around low-mass M-dwarfs. We then investigate the feasibility of detecting these Earth-sized planets. We find that such objects can feasibly be detected by a ground-based transit survey if their formation frequency is high and if correlated noise can be controlled to sub-milli-magnitude levels. Our simulations of terrestrial planet formation follow the growth of planetary embryos around a fiducial M7 (0.12 MSun) primary using a coupled semi-analytic model and a full N-body treatment. The final planetary system configurations produced in the simulations generally consist of 3-5 planets with masses of order 0.1-1.0 MEarth in or near the habitable zone of the star. Transits by planets formed through the mechanism modeled could be detected with telescopes of aperture 1m or smaller around many of the nearest M-dwarf stars. To obtain a concrete estimate of the detectability of the planets arising in our simulations, we present a detailed Monte-Carlo transit detection simulation. Adopting a baseline 1.5 mmag level of correlated stellar noise sampled from the photometry of the planet-bearing red dwarf Gl 436, we find that detection of 1 REarth planets around local M-dwarfs is challenging for a ground-based photometric search, but that detection of planets of larger radius is a distinct possibility. The detection of Earth-sized planets is straightforward, however, with an all-sky survey by a low-cost satellite mission or with reduced noise levels. Given a reduced correlated noise level of 0.45 mmag, a space-based photometric search (similar to the TESS mission) should discover 4 of these Earth-sized planets within one year. We thus predict the detection of Earth sized, potentially habitable planets around low-mass M-dwarfs once correlated photometric noise can be controlled to sub-milli-magnitude levels.
This research is supported by NSF Career grant AST-0449986.
Laughlin Greg
Montgomery Ryan
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