A SEARCH FOR EXOZODIACAL CLOUDS WITH KEPLER
- Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 5241 Broad Branch Road, NW, Washington, DC 20015-1305 (United States)
- McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611 (United States)
- Orbital Sciences Corporation/NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)
- SETI Institute/NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)
Planets embedded within dust disks may drive the formation of large scale clumpy dust structures by trapping dust into resonant orbits. Detection and subsequent modeling of the dust structures would help constrain the mass and orbit of the planet and the disk architecture, give clues to the history of the planetary system, and provide a statistical estimate of disk asymmetry for future exoEarth-imaging missions. Here, we present the first search for these resonant structures in the inner regions of planetary systems by analyzing the light curves of hot Jupiter planetary candidates identified by the Kepler mission. We detect only one candidate disk structure associated with KOI 838.01 at the 3{sigma} confidence level, but subsequent radial velocity measurements reveal that KOI 838.01 is a grazing eclipsing binary and the candidate disk structure is a false positive. Using our null result, we place an upper limit on the frequency of dense exozodi structures created by hot Jupiters. We find that at the 90% confidence level, less than 21% of Kepler hot Jupiters create resonant dust clumps that lead and trail the planet by {approx}90 Degree-Sign with optical depths {approx}> 5 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup -6}, which corresponds to the resonant structure expected for a lone hot Jupiter perturbing a dynamically cold dust disk 50 times as dense as the zodiacal cloud.
- OSTI ID:
- 22167687
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 764, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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