Five New Transit Epochs of the Exoplanet OGLE-TR-111b

TL;DR

This study presents five new transit observations of exoplanet OGLE-TR-111b, analyzes transit timing variations over four years, and constrains the presence of additional planets in the system.

Contribution

It provides new transit data, refines TTV analysis, and places limits on additional planets' masses near resonances in the OGLE-TR-111b system.

Findings

No significant TTVs larger than 1.5 minutes detected.

Excludes additional planets >1.3, 0.4, 0.5 M_earth at specific resonances.

Limits potential second planets to about 30 M_earth between resonances.

Abstract

We report five new transit epochs of the extrasolar planet OGLE-TR-111b, observed in the v-HIGH and Bessell I bands with the FORS1 and FORS2 at the ESO Very Large Telescope, between April and May 2008. The new transits have been combined with all previously published transit data for this planet to provide a new Transit Timing Variations (TTVs) analysis of its orbit. We discard TTVs with amplitudes larger than 1.5 minutes over a 4-year observation time baseline, in agreement with the recent result by Adams et al.(2010a). Dynamical simulations fully exclude the presence of additional planets in the system with masses greater than 1.3, 0.4 and 0.5 M_earth at the 3:2, 1:2, 2:1 resonances, respectively. We also place an upper limit of about 30 M_earth on the mass of potential second planets in the region between the 3:2 and 1:2 mean-motion resonances.