The M dwarf planet search programme at the ESO VLT + UVES. A search for terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of M dwarfs

We present radial velocity (RV) measurements of our sample of 40 M dwarfs from our planet search programme with VLT+UVES begun in 2000. Although with our RV precision down to 2-2.5 m/s and timebase line of up to 7 years, we are capable of finding planets of a few Earth masses in the close-in habitable zones of M dwarfs, there is no detection of a planetary companion. To demonstrate this we present mass detection limits allowing us to exclude Jupiter-mass planets up to 1 AU for most of our sample stars. We identified 6 M dwarfs that host a brown dwarf or low-mass stellar companion. With the exception of these, all other sample stars show low RV variability with an rms <20 m/s. Some high proper motion stars exhibit a linear RV trend consistent with their secular acceleration. Furthermore, we examine our data sets for a possible correlation between RVs and stellar activity as seen in variations of the Hα line strength. For Barnard's star we found a significant anticorrelation, but most of the sample stars do not show such a correlation.

Based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, Paranal Chile, ESO programmes 65.L-0428, 66.C-0446, 267.C-5700, 68.C-0415, 69.C-0722, 70.C-0044, 71.C-0498, 072.C-0495, 173.C-0606, 078.C-0829. Radial velocity data are available in electronic form at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/505/859