A planetary system with gas giants and super-Earths around the nearby M dwarf GJ 676A. Optimizing data analysis techniques for the detection of multi-planetary systems

TL;DR

This study enhances detection methods for low-mass exoplanets in high-multiplicity systems around M dwarfs, applying optimized data analysis to reveal new planetary candidates in the GJ 676A system.

Contribution

It develops and compares advanced data analysis techniques, including refined periodograms and Bayesian methods, to improve sensitivity in detecting multiple low-mass planets from existing datasets.

Findings

Confirmed the known gas giant and long-term trend.

Detected two new super-Earth candidates.

Bayesian methods showed higher early detection sensitivity.

Abstract

Several M dwarfs are targets of systematical monitoring in searches for Doppler signals caused by low-mass exoplanet companions. As a result, an emerging population of high-multiplicity planetary systems around low-mass stars are being detected as well. We optimize classic data analysis methods and develop new ones to enhance sensitivity towards low-amplitude planets in high-multiplicity systems. We apply these methods to the public HARPS observations of GJ 676A, a nearby M dwarf with one reported gas giant companion. We re-derived Doppler measurements using the template matching method (HARPS-TERRA). We used refined versions of periodograms to assess the presence of additional low-mass companions. We analyse the same dataset with Bayesian tools and compared the performance of both approaches. We confirm the reported massive gas giant candidate and a long period trend, whose curvature is now well detected. We also find very secure evidence of two new candidates in close-in orbits and masses in the super-Earth mass regime. Despite the increased sensitivity of the new periodogram tools, we find that Bayesian methods are more sensitive in the early detection of candidate signals. While hardware development is important, development of data analysis techniques can help to reveal new results from existing data sets with significantly fewer resources. This new system holds the record of minimum-mass range (from Msin i = 4.5 M_Earth to 5 M_Jup) and period range (from 3.6 days to more than 10 years). Although all the planet candidates are substantially more massive, it is the first exoplanetary system with a general architecture similar to our solar system. GJ 676A can be happily added to the family of high-multiplicity planetary systems around M dwarfs.