Measuring the Masses and Radii of Sub-Neptunes with Transit Timing Variations
Abstract
The bounty of sub-Neptunes discovered by Kepler enables us to study a regime in planetary size and mass that is absent from the Solar System. This regime includes a transition from rocky planets to those with substantial amounts of volatiles-- in either ice mantles or deep atmospheres. Characterizing these worlds by their bulk densities can probe this transition, and this requires mass and radius determinations. Outside our solar system, there is a small sample of planets with known masses and radii, mostly hot jupiters whose radii are known from transit depths, and whose masses are determined from radial velocity spectroscopy (RV). In the absence of mass determinations via RV observations, transit timing variations (TTVs) offer a chance to probe perturbations between planets that pass close to one another or are near resonance, and hence dynamical fits to observed transit times can measure planetary masses and orbital parameters. Such modelling can probe planetary masses at longer orbital periods than RV targets, although not without some challenges. For example, in modeling pairwise planetary perturbations, a degeneracy between eccentricity and mass exists that limits the accuracy of mass determinations. Nevertheless, in several compact multiplanet systems, fitting complex TTV signals can break the degeneracy, permitting useful mass determinations. The precision in measuring the radius of a transiting planet rests on the uncertainty in the stellar radius, which is typically ~10% for targets with spectral follow-up. With dynamical fits, however, solutions for the orbital parameters including the eccentricity vectors can, alongside the transit lightcurves, tightly constrain the stellar density and radius. Revisiting the six-planet system of Kepler-11, our dynamical fits to TTVs, alongside spectroscopic data on the host star, reduced the stellar and hence planetary radius uncertainties to just 2%, permitting useful planetary density determinations. In the case of Kepler-11, planetary densities are lower than typical RV determinations in the same mass range. Other similar compact multi-planet systems follow the trend set by Kepler-11.
- Publication:
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AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #45
- Pub Date:
- October 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013DPS....4530007J