Formation and Detectability of Terrestrial Planets Around Alpha Centauri B

TL;DR

This study simulates planetary formation around Alpha Centauri B and demonstrates that Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone could be detected within a few years using radial velocity methods, despite stellar noise challenges.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed simulation of terrestrial planet formation around Alpha Centauri B and assesses the feasibility of detecting such planets with current radial velocity techniques.

Findings

Multiple-planet systems form with planets in the 1-2 MEarth range at 0.5-1.5 AU.

A 1.8 MEarth planet in the habitable zone is detectable within three years of observation.

Detection is feasible even with 3 m/s radial velocity precision if noise is white.

Abstract

We simulate the formation of planetary systems around Alpha Centauri B. The N-body accretionary evolution of a 1/r disk populated with 400-900 lunar-mass protoplanets is followed for 200 Myr. All simulations lead to the formation of multiple-planet systems with at least one planet in the 1-2 MEarth mass range at 0.5-1.5 AU. We examine the detectability of our simulated planetary systems by generating synthetic radial velocity observations including noise based on the radial velocity residuals to the recently published three planet fit to the nearby K0V star HD 69830. Using these synthetic observations, we find that we can reliably detect a 1.8 MEarth planet in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri B after only three years of high cadence observations. We also find that the planet is detectable even if the radial velocity precision is 3 m/s, as long as the noise spectrum is white. Our results show that the greatest uncertainty in our ability to detect rocky planets in the Alpha Centauri system is the unknown magnitude of ultra-low frequency stellar noise.