Using hydrodynamical simulations of stellar atmospheres for periodogram standardization : application to exoplanet detection

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel exoplanet detection method calibrated with hydrodynamical simulations of stellar atmospheres, improving robustness and power in identifying planetary signals amidst complex stellar noise.

Contribution

The paper presents a new detection approach that leverages hydrodynamical simulations for calibration, addressing the challenge of unknown stellar noise statistics in exoplanet detection.

Findings

Method is powerful and robust against stellar noise variability

Calibration with HD simulations improves detection accuracy

Performance validated on synthetic and real data

Abstract

Our aim is to devise a detection method for exoplanet signatures (multiple sinusoids) that is both powerful and robust to partially unknown statistics under the null hypothesis. In the considered application, the noise is mostly created by the stellar atmosphere, with statistics depending on the complicated interplay of several parameters. Recent progresses in hydrodynamic (HD) simulations show however that realistic stellar noise realizations can be numerically produced off-line by astrophysicists. We propose a detection method that is calibrated by HD simulations and analyze its performances. A comparison of the theoretical results with simulations on synthetic and real data shows that the proposed method is powerful and robust.