Confirmation of Hot Jupiter Kepler-41b via Phase Curve Analysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel photometric phase curve analysis method to confirm giant exoplanets like Kepler-41b without relying solely on radial velocity data, enabling efficient validation of many Kepler candidates.

Contribution

The authors develop and demonstrate a new photometric confirmation technique for giant planets, including modeling phase variations and ruling out false positives due to stellar blends.

Findings

Successfully confirmed Kepler-41b using the new photometric method.

The method can potentially confirm about two dozen Kepler giant planets.

Provides measurements of planet mass, size, and temperature from light curves.

Abstract

We present high precision photometry of Kepler-41, a giant planet in a 1.86 day orbit around a G6V star that was recently confirmed through radial velocity measurements. We have developed a new method to confirm giant planets solely from the photometric light curve, and we apply this method herein to Kepler-41 to establish the validity of this technique. We generate a full phase photometric model by including the primary and secondary transits, ellipsoidal variations, Doppler beaming and reflected/emitted light from the planet. Third light contamination scenarios that can mimic a planetary transit signal are simulated by injecting a full range of dilution values into the model, and we re-fit each diluted light curve model to the light curve. The resulting constraints on the maximum occultation depth and stellar density combined with stellar evolution models rules out stellar blends and provides a measurement of the planet's mass, size, and temperature. We expect about two dozen Kepler giant planets can be confirmed via this method.