The Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect and Analytic Radial Velocity Curves for Transiting Extrasolar Planetary Systems

By Yasuhiro Ohta, A. Taruya, Y. Suto. 2004

231 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A transiting extrasolar planet sequentially blocks off the light coming from the different parts of the disk of the host star in a time-dependent manner. Because of the spin of the star, this produces an asymmetric distortion in the line profiles of the stellar spectrum, leading to an apparent anomaly in the the radial velocity curves, known as the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect. Here, we derive approximate but accurate analytic formulae for the anomaly in the radial velocity curves, taking into account the stellar limb darkening. The formulae are particularly useful in extracting information on the projected angle between the planetary orbit axis and the stellar spin axis, λ, and the projected stellar spin velocity, V sin Is. We create mock samples for the radial curves for the transiting extrasolar system HD 209458 and demonstrate that constraints on the spin parameters (V sin Is, λ) can be significantly improved by combining our analytic template formulae and the precision velocity curves from high-resolution spectroscopic observations with 8-10 m class telescopes. Thus, future observational exploration of transiting systems using the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect will be one of the most important probes for a better understanding of the origin of extrasolar planetary systems, especially the origin of their angular momentum.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/06f9c6627171130e1cc9f157f4f21de301dded58

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. J. Winn
2. J. Southworth
3. J. Johnson
4. D. Charbonneau
5. Nuno C. Santos
6. S. Udry
7. Jon Fortney
8. M. Perryman

Citations in the corpus

• TIDAL EVOLUTION OF CLOSE-IN PLANETS (2010, background): “Additionally, there are currently at least 26 systems with measurements of the projected stellar obliquity angle λ (see Table 1) through the RossiterMcLaughlin (RM) effect (Rossiter 1924; McLaughlin 1924; Ohta et al. 2005; Gaudi & Winn 2007).”
• EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLE SPIN–ORBIT MISALIGNMENT ALONG THE LINE OF SIGHT IN TRANSITING EXOPLANET SYSTEMS (2010, methodology): “The angle λ is the angular distance between the projections of np and ns in the plane of the sky, and is observable through the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect (Rossiter 1924; McLaughlin 1924; Ohta et al. 2005).”
• The Rossiter-McLaughlin effect of CoRoT-3b and HD 189733b (2009, methodology): “The data is publicly available at the CDS (cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr) 1 We used the Ohta et al. (2005) notation differentiating the V sin(i) to the V sin(I). i is the projected inclination of the planet’s orbit on the sky, whereas I is the projected inclination of the stellar equator on the sky.”
• Misaligned spin-orbit in the XO-3 planetary system?† (2008, methodology): “Following Loeillet et al. (2008) and Bouchy et al. (2008), we used the analytical Ohta et al. (2005) description of the Rossiter-McLaughlin anomaly.”
• The Transit Light Curve Project. V. System Parameters and Stellar Rotation Period of HD 189733 (2006, unknown): “3 of Ohta et al. 2005.)”
• OBLIQUITIES OF HOT JUPITER HOST STARS: EVIDENCE FOR TIDAL INTERACTIONS AND PRIMORDIAL MISALIGNMENTS (2012, methodology): “In Section 5.2 we sort the systems according to a theoretical tidal 4 We present here all measurements with the sign convection form Ohta et al. (2005) and use the symbol λ.”
• Prospects for the Characterization and Confirmation of Transiting Exoplanets via the Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect (2006, methodology): “Ohta et al. (2005) suggested that transiting planets might announce themselves through large outliers in databases of radial velocity measurements.”
• EXOPLANETARY SPIN–ORBIT ALIGNMENT: RESULTS FROM THE ENSEMBLE OF ROSSITER–MCLAUGHLIN OBSERVATIONS (2009, background): “The distortion is usually manifested as an “anomalous” Doppler shift of order ∆V = −(Rp/Rs) 2Vp, where Rp/Rs is the planet-to-star radius ratio, and Vp is the projected rotation rate of the hidden portion of the stellar photosphere (Ohta et al. 2005; Giménez 2006; Gaudi & Winn 2007).”
• STARSPOTS, SPIN–ORBIT MISALIGNMENT, AND ACTIVE LATITUDES IN THE HAT-P-11 EXOPLANETARY SYSTEM (2011, methodology): “…because they are fundamental geometric parameters, and because they bear clues about the formation, migration, and tidal evolution of closein planets (see, e.g., Queloz et al. 2000; Ohta et al. 2005; Winn et al. 2005, 2010a; Fabrycky & Winn 2009; Triaud et al. 2010; Morton & Johnson 2011).”