The Doppler Shadow of WASP-3b: A tomographic analysis of Rossiter-McLaughlin observations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new tomographic method to analyze the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, providing precise measurements of the spin-orbit alignment of WASP-3b, supporting a disc migration scenario.

Contribution

A novel tomographic analysis technique for Rossiter-McLaughlin observations that reduces systematic errors and improves measurement precision.

Findings

The projected stellar spin rate is v sin i = 13.9 ± 0.03 km/s.

The system is well aligned, indicating migration via tidal interactions with a protoplanetary disc.

The star's age is estimated at approximately 300 Myr, with an upper limit of 2 Gyr.

Abstract

Hot-Jupiter planets must form at large separations from their host stars where the temperatures are cool enough for their cores to condense. They then migrate inwards to their current observed orbital separations. Different theories of how this migration occurs lead to varying distributions of orbital eccentricity and the alignment between the rotation axis of the star and the orbital axis of the planet. The spin-orbit alignment of a transiting system is revealed via the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, which is the anomaly present in the radial velocity measurements of the rotating star during transit due to the planet blocking some of the starlight. In this paper we aim to measure the spin-orbit alignment of the WASP-3 system via a new way of analysing the Rossiter-McLaughlin observations. We apply a new tomographic method for analysing the time variable asymmetry of stellar line profiles caused by the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect. This new method eliminates the systematic error inherent in previous methods used to analyse the effect. We find a value for the projected stellar spin rate of v sin i = 13.9 \pm 0.03 km/s which is in agreement with previous measurements but has a much higher precision. The system is found to be well aligned which favours an evolutionary history for WASP-3b involving migration through tidal interactions with a protoplanetary disc. Using gyrochronology we estimate the age of the star to be ~300 Myr with an upper limit of 2 Gyr from comparison with isochrones.