TTVFast: An efficient and accurate code for transit timing inversion problems
- Department of Physics and Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Washington at Seattle, Seattle, WA 98195 (United States)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Southwest Research Institute, Department of Space Studies, 1050 Walnut Street, Suite 400, Boulder, CO 80302 (United States)
Transit timing variations (TTVs) have proven to be a powerful technique for confirming Kepler planet candidates, for detecting non-transiting planets, and for constraining the masses and orbital elements of multi-planet systems. These TTV applications often require the numerical integration of orbits for computation of transit times (as well as impact parameters and durations); frequently tens of millions to billions of simulations are required when running statistical analyses of the planetary system properties. We have created a fast code for transit timing computation, TTVFast, which uses a symplectic integrator with a Keplerian interpolator for the calculation of transit times. The speed comes at the expense of accuracy in the calculated times, but the accuracy lost is largely unnecessary, as transit times do not need to be calculated to accuracies significantly smaller than the measurement uncertainties on the times. The time step can be tuned to give sufficient precision for any particular system. We find a speed-up of at least an order of magnitude relative to dynamical integrations with high precision using a Bulirsch-Stoer integrator.
- OSTI ID:
- 22356776
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 787, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Highly stable evolution of Earth's future orbit despite chaotic behavior of the solar system
On the Detection of Habitable Trojan Planets in the Kepler Circumbinary Systems