Habitable Planets Eclipsing Brown Dwarfs: Strategies for Detection and Characterization

TL;DR

This paper develops detection strategies for habitable planets transiting brown dwarfs, emphasizing observational approaches based on brown dwarf luminosity and orbital periods, and evaluates the potential for biosignature characterization.

Contribution

It introduces optimized search strategies for habitable planets around brown dwarfs and assesses their detection probabilities and characterization feasibility.

Findings

Detection probability ranges from 4.5% to 56%.

Single-night screening can be effective for short orbital periods.

Biosignature characterization is feasible with a 6.5 m space telescope within a small fraction of mission time.

Abstract

Given the very close proximity of their habitable zones, brown dwarfs represent high-value targets in the search for nearby transiting habitable planets that may be suitable for follow-up occultation spectroscopy. In this paper we develop search strategies to find habitable planets transiting brown dwarfs depending on their maximum habitable orbital period (PHZ out). Habitable planets with PHZ out shorter than the useful duration of a night (e.g. 8-10 hrs) can be screened with 100 percent completeness from a single location and in a single night (near-IR). More luminous brown dwarfs require continuous monitoring for longer duration, e.g. from space or from a longitude-distributed network (one test scheduling achieved - 3 telescopes, 13.5 contiguous hours). Using a simulated survey of the 21 closest known brown dwarfs (within 7 pc) we find that the probability of detecting at least one transiting habitable planet is between 4.5 +5.6-1.4 and 56 +31-13 percent, depending on our assumptions. We calculate that brown dwarfs within 5-10 pc are characterizable for potential biosignatures with a 6.5 m space telescope using approx. 1 percent of a 5-year mission's life-time spread over a contiguous segment only one fifth to one tenth of this duration.