Prospects for the Characterization and Confirmation of Transiting Exoplanets via the Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect

By B. Gaudi, J. Winn. 2006

234 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect is the distortion of stellar spectral lines that occurs during eclipses or transits, due to stellar rotation. We assess the future prospects for using the RM effect to measure the alignment of planetary orbits with the spin axes of their parent stars, and to confirm exoplanetary transits. We compute the achievable accuracy for the parameters of interest, in general and for the five known cases of transiting exoplanets with bright host stars. We determine the requirements for detecting the effects of differential rotation. For transiting planets with small masses or long periods (as will be detected by forthcoming satellite missions), the velocity anomaly produced by the RM effect can be much larger than the orbital velocity of the star. For a terrestrial planet in the habitable zone of a Sunlike star found by the Kepler mission, it will be difficult to use the RM effect to confirm transits with current instruments, but it still may be easier than measuring the spectroscopic orbit.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/55c590885aa9883185ef362c1f800993079fa0f7

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. J. Winn
2. J. Johnson
3. D. Charbonneau
4. Jon Fortney
5. J. Southworth
6. G. Marcy
7. Andrew W. Howard
8. S. Udry

Citations in the corpus

• Secular Dynamics in Hierarchical Three-Body Systems (2011, background): “Recent measurements of the sky-projected angle between the orbits of several hot Jupiters and the spins of their host stars have shown that roughly one in four is retrograde (Gaudi and Winn 2007; Triaud et al. 2010; Albrecht et al. 2012).”
• The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT): A Small Robotic Telescope for Large‐Area Synoptic Surveys (2007, background): “These transits provide the opportunity to study the internal structure of planets (Guillot 2005), their atmospheric composition (Charbonneau et al. 2002), spin-orbit alignment (Gaudi & Winn 2007), and the presence of rings or moons (Barnes & Fortnoy 2004).”
• Determining stellar macroturbulence using asteroseismic rotational velocities from Kepler (2014, background): “If 0 λ 180◦ (misaligned orbit) and the impact parameter b 6= 0, an asymmetric signal is produced as the planet covers more of the approaching limb than the receding one, or vice versa (Gaudi & Winn 2007).”
• 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).”
• Origins of Eccentric Extrasolar Planets: Testing the Planet-Planet Scattering Model (2007, methodology): “Measurement of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect could detect a significant relative inclination between the planet’s orbital angular momentum and the stellar rotation axis (Gaudi & Winn 2007) that could be induced by planet scattering (Chatterjee et al. 2008).”
• ON THE FORMATION OF HOT JUPITERS IN STELLAR BINARIES (2012, methodology): “…distant stellar perturbers may be important in the production of HJs. Recent measurements of the sky-projected angle between the orbits of several HJs and the spins of their host stars have shown that misalignment and even retrograde orbits are common (e.g. Gaudi & Winn 2007; Triaud et al. 2010).”
• Misaligned spin-orbit in the XO-3 planetary system?† (2008, background): “…to determine whether the planet is orbiting in the same direction as its host star is rotating, and more generally to measure the sky-projected angle between the planetary orbital axis and the stellar rotation axis, usually noted λ (see, e.g., Ohta et al. 2005; Giménez 2006a; Gaudi & Winn 2007).”
• OBLIQUITIES OF HOT JUPITER HOST STARS: EVIDENCE FOR TIDAL INTERACTIONS AND PRIMORDIAL MISALIGNMENTS (2012, background): “(e.g. Gaudi & Winn 2007; Albrecht et al. 2011b).”
• 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).”
• Observational Evidence for Tidal Interaction in Close Binary Systems (2007, methodology): “To observe the relative inclination of the planetary spin axis, we can use the RM effect for transiting planets (see Gaudi & Winn 2007 for a thorough discussion of the effect and Section 6.1 for a discussion of the same effect observed in eclipsing binaries).”
• THE HEAVY-ELEMENT MASSES OF EXTRASOLAR GIANT PLANETS, REVEALED (2011, background): “…evolution is possible: Perhaps differences in heavy elements could be seen between planets that are well-aligned or mis-aligned with their stellar spin axis, as measured by the Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect (Gaudi & Winn 2007), as these planets may have taken different paths to their current orbits.”
• STARSPOTS, SPIN–ORBIT MISALIGNMENT, AND ACTIVE LATITUDES IN THE HAT-P-11 EXOPLANETARY SYSTEM (2011, methodology): “The traditional method involves observations of the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect, a spectroscopic anomaly that occurs during transits due to slective blockage of the stellar rotation field (see, e.g., Queloz et al. 2000; Ohta et al. 2005; Gaudi & Winn 2007).”