Detectability of Exoplanetary Transits from Radial Velocity Surveys

TL;DR

This paper discusses how radial velocity data can be used to predict and optimize the detection of transiting exoplanets, especially hot Jupiters, by constructing effective photometric follow-up strategies and calculating transit windows.

Contribution

It introduces a method to automatically generate transit ephemerides from radial velocity data and optimizes follow-up observations, addressing biases and application to future surveys.

Findings

Radial velocity data can effectively predict transit windows.

Optimal follow-up strategies improve transit detection efficiency.

Biases against hot Jupiters in surveys are identified and discussed.

Abstract

Of the known transiting extra-solar planets, a few have been detected through photometric follow-up observations of radial velocity planets. Perhaps the best known of these is the transiting exoplanet HD 209458b. For hot Jupiters (periods less than ~5 days), the a priori information that 10% of these planets will transit their parent star due to the geometric transit probability leads to an estimate of the expected transit yields from radial velocity surveys. The radial velocity information can be used to construct an effective photometric follow-up strategy which will provide optimal detection of possible transits. Since the planet-harbouring stars are already known in this case, one is only limited by the photometric precision achieveable by the chosen telescope/instrument. The radial velocity modelling code presented here automatically produces a transit ephemeris for each planet dataset fitted by the program. Since the transit duration is brief compared with the fitted period, we calculate the maximum window for obtaining photometric transit observations after the radial velocity data have been obtained, generalising for eccentric orbits. We discuss a typically employed survey strategy which may contribute to a possible radial velocity bias against detection of the very hot Jupiters which have dominated the transit discoveries. Finally, we describe how these methods can be applied to current and future radial velocity surveys.