PROBING TRAPPIST-1-LIKE SYSTEMS WITH K2
- Astrophysics Group, Cavendish Laboratory, J.J. Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE (United Kingdom)
- Physikalisches Institut and Center for Space and Habitability, Universität Bern, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
- Institut d’Astrophysique et de Geophysique, Universite de Liege, Allee du 6 Aout 17, Bat. B5C, B-4000 Liege (Belgium)
The search for small planets orbiting late M dwarfs holds the promise of detecting Earth-size planets for which their atmospheres could be characterized within the next decade. The recent discovery of TRAPPIST-1 entertains hope that these systems are common around hosts located at the bottom of the main sequence. In this Letter, we investigate the ability of the repurposed Kepler mission ( K2 ) to probe planetary systems similar to TRAPPIST-1. We perform a consistent data analysis of 189 spectroscopically confirmed M5.5 to M9 late M dwarfs from Campaigns 1–6 to search for planet candidates and inject transit signals with properties matching TRAPPIST-1b and c. We find no transiting planet candidates across our K2 sample. Our injection tests show that K2 is able to recover both TRAPPIST-1 planets for 10% of the sample only, mainly because of the inefficient throughput at red wavelengths resulting in Poisson-limited performance for these targets. Increasing injected planetary radii to match GJ 1214b’s size yields a recovery rate of 70%. The strength of K2 is its ability to probe a large number of cool hosts across the different campaigns, out of which the recovery rate of 10% may turn into bona fide detections of TRAPPIST-1-like systems within the next two years.
- OSTI ID:
- 22654278
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 825, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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