Detectability of Transiting Jupiters and Low-Mass Eclipsing Binaries in Sparsely Sampled Pan-STARRS-1 Survey Data

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the Pan-STARRS-1 survey's ability to detect transiting Jupiters and low-mass eclipsing binaries in a sparsely sampled, all-sky dataset through detailed simulations and statistical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a model for the survey's detection potential of deep eclipses caused by planets and binaries, considering sparse sampling and stellar variability.

Findings

Approximately a dozen transiting Jupiters around low-mass stars are detectable.

Around 300 low-mass eclipsing binaries could be identified.

The survey can also find about 10 eclipsing brown dwarfs within 100 pc.

Abstract

We present detailed simulations of the Pan-STARRS-1 (PS1) multi-epoch, multi-band 3-pi Survey in order to assess its potential yield of transiting planets and eclipsing binaries. This survey differs from dedicated transit surveys in that it will cover the entire Northern sky but provide only sparsely sampled light curves. Since most eclipses would be detected at only a single epoch, the 3-pi Survey will be most sensitive to deep eclipses (> 0.10 mag) caused by Jupiters transiting M dwarfs and eclipsing stellar/substellar binaries. The survey will also provide parallaxes for the ~400,000 stars within 100 pc which will enable a volume-limited eclipse search, reducing the number of astrophysical false positives compared to previous magnitude-limited searches. Using the best available empirical data, we constructed a model of the extended solar neighborhood that includes stars, brown dwarfs, and a realistic binary population. We computed the yield of deeply eclipsing systems using both a semi-analytic and a full Monte Carlo approach. We examined statistical tests for detecting single-epoch eclipses in sparsely sampled data and assessed their vulnerability to false positives due to stellar variability. Assuming a short-period planet frequency of 0.5% for M dwarfs, our simulations predict that about a dozen transiting Jupiters around low-mass stars (M < 0.3 Msun) within 100 pc are potentially detectable in the PS1 3-pi Survey, along with ~300 low-mass eclipsing binaries (both component masses < 0.5 Msun), including ~10 eclipsing field brown dwarfs. Extensive follow-up observations would be required to characterize these candidate eclipsing systems, thereby enabling comprehensive tests of structural models and novel insights into the planetary architecture of low-mass stars.