Directed follow-up strategy of low-cadence photometric surveys in Search of Transiting Exoplanets - II. application to Gaia

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the Directed Follow-Up strategy can enhance the detection of transiting exoplanets in Gaia's low-cadence photometry through tailored ground-based observations, despite Gaia not being optimized for transit detection.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of the DFU approach to Gaia data, showing its potential to improve exoplanet detection with ground follow-up.

Findings

DFU can detect transiting planets in Gaia data despite low cadence.

Ground-based follow-up enhances Gaia's transit detection capabilities.

Gaia photometry should be considered in exoplanet searches despite not being optimized for transits.

Abstract

In a previous paper we presented the Directed Follow-Up (DFU) approach, which we suggested can be used to efficiently augment low-cadence photometric surveys in a way that will optimize the chances to detect transiting exoplanets. In this paper we present preliminary tests of applying the DFU approach to the future ESA space mission Gaia. We demonstrate the strategy application to Gaia photometry through a few simulated cases of known transiting planets, using Gaia expected performance and current design. We show that despite the low cadence observations DFU, when tailored for Gaia's scanning law, can facilitate detection of transiting planets with ground-based observations, even during the lifetime of the mission. We conclude that Gaia photometry, although not optimized for transit detection, should not be ignored in the search of transiting planets. With a suitable ground-based follow-up network it can make an important contribution to this search.