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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

A Survey For Very Short-Period Planets In The Kepler Data, Brian Jackson, Christopher C. Stark, Elisabeth R. Adams, John Chambers, Drake Deming Dec 2013

A Survey For Very Short-Period Planets In The Kepler Data, Brian Jackson, Christopher C. Stark, Elisabeth R. Adams, John Chambers, Drake Deming

Brian Jackson

We conducted a search for very short-period transiting objects in the publicly available Kepler data set. Our preliminary survey has revealed four planetary candidates, all with orbital periods less than 12 hr. We have analyzed the data for these candidates using photometric models that include transit light curves, ellipsoidal variations, and secondary eclipses to constrain the candidates’ radii, masses, and effective temperatures. Even with masses of only a few Earth masses, the candidates’ short periods mean that they may induce stellar radial velocity signals (a few m s−1) detectable by currently operating facilities. The origins of such short-period planets are …


Measurement Of Spin-Orbit Misalignment And Nodal Precession For The Planet Around Pre-Main-Sequence Star Ptfo 8-8695 From Gravity Darkening, Jason W. Barnes, Julian C. Van Eyken, Brian K. Jackson, David R. Ciardi, Jonathan J. Fortney Sep 2013

Measurement Of Spin-Orbit Misalignment And Nodal Precession For The Planet Around Pre-Main-Sequence Star Ptfo 8-8695 From Gravity Darkening, Jason W. Barnes, Julian C. Van Eyken, Brian K. Jackson, David R. Ciardi, Jonathan J. Fortney

Brian Jackson

PTFO 8-8695b represents the first transiting exoplanet candidate orbiting a pre-main-sequence star (van Eyken et al. 2012, ApJ, 755, 42). We find that the unusual lightcurve shapes of PTFO 8-8695 can be explained by transits of a planet across an oblate, gravity-darkened stellar disk. We develop a theoretical framework for understanding precession of a planetary orbit’s ascending node for the case when the stellar rotational angular momentum and the planetary orbital angular momentum are comparable in magnitude. We then implement those ideas to simultaneously and self-consistently fit two separate lightcurves observed in 2009 December and 2010 December. Our two self-consistent …


A Search For Exozodiacal Clouds With Kepler, Christopher C. Stark, Alan P. Boss, Alycia J. Weinberger, Brian K. Jackson, Michael Endl, William D. Cochran, Marshall Johnson, Caroline Caldwell, Eric Agol, Eric B. Ford, Jennifer R. Hall, Khadeejah A. Ibrahim, Jie Li Feb 2013

A Search For Exozodiacal Clouds With Kepler, Christopher C. Stark, Alan P. Boss, Alycia J. Weinberger, Brian K. Jackson, Michael Endl, William D. Cochran, Marshall Johnson, Caroline Caldwell, Eric Agol, Eric B. Ford, Jennifer R. Hall, Khadeejah A. Ibrahim, Jie Li

Brian Jackson

Planets embedded within dust disks may drive the formation of large scale clumpy dust structures by trapping dust into resonant orbits. Detection and subsequent modeling of the dust structures would help constrain the mass and orbit of the planet and the disk architecture, give clues to the history of the planetary system, and provide a statistical estimate of disk asymmetry for future exoEarth-imaging missions. Here, we present the first search for these resonant structures in the inner regions of planetary systems by analyzing the light curves of hot Jupiter planetary candidates identified by the Kepler mission. We detect only one …