THE OCCURRENCE OF POTENTIALLY HABITABLE PLANETS ORBITING M DWARFS ESTIMATED FROM THE FULL KEPLER DATASET AND AN EMPIRICAL MEASUREMENT OF THE DETECTION SENSITIVITY

By C. Dressing, D. Charbonneau. 2015

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We present an improved estimate of the occurrence rate of small planets orbiting small stars by searching the full four-year Kepler data set for transiting planets using our own planet detection pipeline and conducting transit injection and recovery simulations to empirically measure the search completeness of our pipeline. We identified 156 planet candidates, including one object that was not previously identified as a Kepler Object of Interest. We inspected all publicly available follow-up images, observing notes, and centroid analyses, and corrected for the likelihood of false positives. We evaluated the sensitivity of our detection pipeline on a star-by-star basis by injecting 2000 transit signals into the light curve of each target star. For periods shorter than 50 days, we find 0.56 − 0.05 + 0.06 ?> Earth-size planets (1−1.5 R⊕) and 0.46 − 0.05 + 0.07 ?> super-Earths (1.5−2 R⊕) per M dwarf. In total, we estimate a cumulative planet occurrence rate of 2.5 ± 0.2 planets per M dwarf with radii 1−4 R⊕ and periods shorter than 200 days. Within a conservatively defined habitable zone (HZ) based on the moist greenhouse inner limit and maximum greenhouse outer limit, we estimate an occurrence rate of 0.16 − 0.07 + 0.17 ?> Earth-size planets and 0.12 − 0.05 + 0.10 ?> super-Earths per M dwarf HZ. Adopting the broader insolation boundaries of the recent Venus and early Mars limits yields a higher estimate of 0.24 − 0.08 + 0.18 ?> Earth-size planets and 0.21 − 0.06 + 0.11 ?> super-Earths per M dwarf HZ. This suggests that the nearest potentially habitable non-transiting and transiting Earth-size planets are 2.6 ± 0.4 pc and 10.6 − 1.8 + 1.6 ?> pc away, respectively. If we include super-Earths, these distances diminish to 2.1 ± 0.2 pc and 8.6 − 0.8 + 0.7 ?> pc.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

A SYSTEMATIC SEARCH FOR TRANSITING PLANETS IN THE K2 DATA (2015, methodology): “They will also deliver input data for next-generation population inferences (Foreman-Mackey et al. 2014), especially for the population of planets around cool stars (for example, Dressing & Charbonneau 2015).”
The California-Kepler Survey. VII. Precise Planet Radii Leveraging Gaia DR2 Reveal the Stellar Mass Dependence of the Planet Radius Gap (2018, background): “…magnitude-limited nature of CKS, our analysis was restricted to a fairly narrow range in M, spanning 0.85 to 1.2M. Previous studies of the radius distribution of planets orbiting M dwarfs have shown that these planets tend to be smaller on average (Morton & Swift 2014; Dressing & Charbonneau 2015).”
The Surface UV Environment on Planets Orbiting M Dwarfs: Implications for Prebiotic Chemistry and the Need for Experimental Follow-up (2017, background): “Mdwarfs are the most common type of star in the Galaxy, and exoplanet population studies suggest thatpotentially habitable6 planets orbiting these stars are common (Dressing & Charbonneau 2015).”
Identifying Exoplanets with Deep Learning: A Five-planet Resonant Chain around Kepler-80 and an Eighth Planet around Kepler-90 (2017, background): “As the Kepler mission matured and the list of planet candidates grew, the focus of the community shifted towards population-level studies (Fressin et al. 2013; Petigura et al. 2013a,b; Foreman-Mackey et al. 2014; Dressing & Charbonneau 2013, 2015; Burke et al. 2015; Mulders et al. 2015a,b).”
A sub-Neptune exoplanet with a low-metallicity methane-depleted atmosphere and Mie-scattering clouds (2019, background): “[1] Department of Physics and Institute for Research on Exoplanets, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada [2] Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA [3] Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, 1629 E.”
Multiple Disk Gaps and Rings Generated by a Single Super-Earth (2017, background): “5 The Kepler mission showed that more than half of FGKM dwarfs have super-Earth companions out to orbital periods of ∼100 days (e.g., Fressin et al. 2013; Dressing & Charbonneau 2015).”
Habitable Moist Atmospheres on Terrestrial Planets near the Inner Edge of the Habitable Zone around M Dwarfs (2017, background): “…(HZ) by both the Kepler mission and ground-based surveys (Anglada-Escudé et al. 2016; Kane et al. 2016; Gillon et al. 2017) have shown that potentially habitable planets are common in our Galaxy (Petigura et al. 2013; Foreman-Mackey et al. 2014; Dressing & Charbonneau 2015; Silburt et al. 2015).”
The Habitability of Planets Orbiting M-dwarf Stars (2016, background): “…that the best place to look for habitable planets may be around M-dwarf stars (Joshi et al., 1997; Joshi, 2003; Selsis et al., 2007; Wordsworth et al., 2010; Joshi & Haberle, 2012; Shields et al., 2013; Kopparapu, 2013; Shields et al., 2014; Dressing & Charbonneau, 2015; Gale & Wandel, 2015).”
Observing the Atmospheres of Known Temperate Earth-sized Planets with JWST (2017, background): “Planets smaller than Neptune are now known to be common around both sunlike stars and cooler M dwarfs (Petigura et al. 2013; Burke et al. 2015; Dressing & Charbonneau 2015), with the Kepler mission revealing thousands of planet candidates around distant stars (Borucki et al. 2011; Coughlin et al.…”
Optimized transit detection algorithm to search for periodic transits of small planets (2019, background): “…the orbital period of K2-110 b as P = 13.8662 (± 0.0122) d. Empirical thresholds for a transit detection have been proposed to range from SDE > 6 (Dressing & Charbonneau 2015), SDE > 6.5 (Livingston et al. 2018), SDE > 7 (Siverd et al. 2012), 6–8 as a function of period (Pope et al. 2016;…”
The California-Kepler Survey. IV. Metal-rich Stars Host a Greater Diversity of Planets (2017, neutral): “…& Shao (2011); Traub (2012); Howard et al. (2012); Fressin et al. (2013); Dong & Zhu (2013); Petigura et al. (2013); ForemanMackey et al. (2014); Burke et al. (2015); Dressing & Charbonneau (2015); Mulders et al. (2015). and with the occurrence of large planets (RP > 1.7 R⊕, P < 100 days).”
THE MUSCLES TREASURY SURVEY. I. MOTIVATION AND OVERVIEW (2016, background): “The importance of M dwarf exoplanetary systems is underscored by recent Kepler results and radial velocity measurements showing that between ∼ 10 – 50% of M dwarfs host Earth-size planets (0.5 – 1.4 R⊕) in their HZs (Dressing & Charbonneau 2015; Kopparapu 2013; Bonfils et al. 2013).”
Characterization of the K2-18 multi-planetary system with HARPS: A habitable zone super-Earth and discovery of a second, warm super-Earth on a non-coplanar orbit (2017, background): “M dwarfs are also known to frequently host multiple small planets (typically 2.5 planets per star with 0.5 ≤ rp/R⊕ ≤ 4 and within 200 days; Dressing & Charbonneau 2015; Gaidos et al. 2016) thus enabling direct comparative planetology to be conducted on known multi-planet systems.”