New approach for modeling of transiting exoplanets for arbitrary limb-darkening law

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method and software for modeling transiting exoplanets that accommodates any limb-darkening law, enabling rapid, precise calculations crucial for analyzing high-precision photometric data.

Contribution

The authors developed a new solution transforming double integrals into single integrals for transit modeling, allowing arbitrary limb-darkening laws and creating a fast, interactive code called TAC-maker.

Findings

Validated against Mandel & Agol (2002) method for common limb-darkening laws.

First to enable arbitrary limb-darkening law modeling in transit simulations.

Provides high-precision calculations suitable for current observational data.

Abstract

We present a new solution of the direct problem of planet transits based on transformation of double integrals to single ones. On the basis of our direct problem solution we created the code TAC-maker for rapid and interactive calculation of synthetic planet transits by numerical computations of the integrals. The validation of our approach was made by comparison with the results of the wide-spread Mandel & Agol (2002) method for the cases of linear, quadratic and squared root limb-darkening laws and various combinations of model parameters. For the first time our approach allows the use of arbitrary limb-darkening law of the host star. This advantage together with the practically arbitrary precision of the calculations make the code a valuable tool that faces the challenges of the continuously increasing photometric precision of the ground-based and space observations.