Placing Limits On The Transit Timing Variations Of Circumbinary Exoplanets

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fast, analytical method to predict maximum transit timing variations for circumbinary exoplanets, aiding in efficient planet detection and characterization.

Contribution

The authors develop and validate an analytical model that accurately predicts transit timing limits for circumbinary planets, improving search efficiency.

Findings

Model predicts transit timing limits within 1% accuracy

Applicable to large datasets with incomplete parameters

Validated against Kepler-16b, -34b, and -35b data

Abstract

We present an efficient analytical method to predict the maximum transit timing variations of a circumbinary exoplanet, given some basic parameters of the host binary. We derive an analytical model giving limits on the potential location of transits for coplanar planets orbiting eclipsing binaries, then test it against numerical N-body simulations of a distribution of binaries and planets. We also show the application of the analytic model to Kepler-16b, -34b and -35b. The resulting method is fast, efficient and is accurate to approximately 1% in predicting limits on possible times of transits over a three-year observing campaign. The model can easily be used to, for example, place constraints on transit timing while performing circumbinary planet searches on large datasets. It is adaptable to use in situations where some or many of the planet and binary parameters are unknown.