Effects of Mutual Transits by Extrasolar Planet-Companion Systems on Light Curves

TL;DR

This paper studies how mutual transits in extrasolar planet-companion systems affect light curves, revealing asymmetries and fluctuations that can help identify binary or satellite systems and measure their properties.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of mutual transit effects on light curves, providing a method to detect and characterize binary or satellite systems around stars.

Findings

Mutual transits cause characteristic asymmetries and fluctuations in light curves.

Short-distance systems can produce apparent increases in brightness during occultations.

Monitoring Kepler data could discover Earth-Moon-like systems or set upper limits on their frequency.

Abstract

We consider the effects of mutual transits by extrasolar planet-companion systems (in a true binary or a planet-satellite system) on light curves. We show that induced changes in light curves depend strongly on a ratio between a planet-companion's orbital velocity around their host star and a planet-companion's spin speed around their common center of mass. In both the slow and fast spin cases (corresponding to long and short distances between them, respectively), a certain asymmetry appears in light curves. We show that, especially in the case of short distances, occultation of one faint object by the other, while the transit of the planet-companion system occurs in front of its parent star, causes an apparent increase in light curves and characteristic fluctuations appear as important evidence of mutual transits. We show also that extrasolar mutual transits provide a complementary method of measuring the radii of two transiting objects, their separation and mass, and consequently identifying them as a true binary, planet-satellite system or others. Monitoring $10^5$ stars for three years with Kepler may lead to a discovery of a second Earth-Moon-like system if the fraction of such systems for an averaged star is larger than 0.05, or it may put upper limits on the fraction as f < 0.05.