The nature of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets
Simon L. Grimm, Brice-Olivier Demory, Micha\"el Gillon, Caroline Dorn,, Eric Agol, Artem Burdanov, Laetitia Delrez, Marko Sestovic, Amaury H.M.J., Triaud, Martin Turbet, \'Emeline Bolmont, Anthony Caldas, Julien de Wit,, Emmanu\"el Jehin, J\'er\'emy Leconte, Sean N. Raymond

TL;DR
This study refines the masses and densities of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets using a novel genetic algorithm approach to transit-timing variations, revealing their likely compositions and improving understanding of terrestrial planet formation.
Contribution
Introduces a new method combining genetic algorithms and N-body simulations to accurately determine planetary masses and densities in complex multi-planet systems like TRAPPIST-1.
Findings
Significantly reduces density uncertainties to 5-12%.
Suggests some planets are rocky, others have thick volatile atmospheres.
Provides insights into the planets' bulk structures and compositions.
Abstract
Context. The TRAPPIST-1 system hosts seven Earth-sized, temperate exoplanets orbiting an ultra-cool dwarf star. As such, it represents a remarkable setting to study the formation and evolution of terrestrial planets that formed in the same protoplanetary disk. While the sizes of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are all known to better than 5% precision, their densities have significant uncertainties (between 28% and 95%) because of poor constraints on the planet's masses. Aims.The goal of this paper is to improve our knowledge of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary masses and densities using transit-timing variations (TTV). The complexity of the TTV inversion problem is known to be particularly acute in multi-planetary systems (convergence issues, degeneracies and size of the parameter space), especially for resonant chain systems such as TRAPPIST-1. Methods. To overcome these challenges, we have used a…
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