Transiting Planets with LSST I: Potential for LSST Exoplanet Detection

TL;DR

This paper explores LSST's potential to detect transiting exoplanets, including various planet types around different stars, leveraging its extensive survey data for exoplanet discovery beyond primary objectives.

Contribution

It demonstrates that LSST data can be used to detect multiple types of transiting exoplanets, expanding the scope of exoplanet surveys to less-studied stellar populations.

Findings

Detection of Hot Jupiters around solar-type stars

Potential to find Super-Earths in habitable zones

Sensitivity to planets in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) has been designed in order to satisfy several different scientific objectives that can be addressed by a ten-year synoptic sky survey. However, LSST will also provide a large amount of data that can then be exploited for additional science beyond its primary goals. We demonstrate the potential of using LSST data to search for transiting exoplanets, and in particular to find planets orbiting host stars that are members of stellar populations that have been less thoroughly probed by current exoplanet surveys. We find that existing algorithms can detect in simulated LSST light curves the transits of Hot Jupiters around solar-type stars, Hot Neptunes around K dwarfs, and planets orbiting stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. We also show that LSST would have the sensitivity to potentially detect Super-Earths orbiting red dwarfs, including those in habitable zone orbits, if they are present in some fields that LSST will observe. From these results, we make the case that LSST has the ability to provide a valuable contribution to exoplanet science.