The Exoplanet Eccentricity Distribution from Kepler Planet Candidates

Details The Exoplanet Eccentricity Distribution from Kepler Planet Candidates The Exoplanet Eccentricity Distribution from Kepler Planet Candidates

2012-03-07

arxiv.org/abs/1203.1631v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to ApJ Letters

Scientific paper

The eccentricity distribution of exoplanets is known from radial velocity surveys to be divergent from circular orbits beyond 0.1 AU. This is particularly the case for large planets where the radial velocity technique is most sensitive. The eccentricity of planetary orbits can have a large effect on the transit probability and subsequently the planet yield of transit surveys. The Kepler mission is the first transit survey that probes deep enough into period-space to allow this effect to be seen via the variation in transit durations. We use the Kepler planet candidates to show that the eccentricity distribution matches that found from radial velocity surveys to a high degree of confidence. We further show that the mean eccentricity of the Kepler candidates decreases with decreasing planet size indicating that smaller planets are preferentially found in low-eccentricity orbits.

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