Stellar contributions to the line profiles of high-resolution transmission spectra of exoplanets

TL;DR

This paper investigates stellar effects contaminating high-resolution transmission spectra of exoplanets, develops correction methods, and refines the characterization of atmospheric sodium lines, emphasizing the importance of stellar contamination correction.

Contribution

It introduces a new observationally-based method to correct for stellar rotation effects and refines the analysis of sodium line profiles in exoplanet atmospheres.

Findings

Main sodium signal is centered on stellar rest frame.

Corrected line profiles are narrower than previous reports.

Highlighting the necessity of stellar effect correction for accurate atmospheric characterization.

Abstract

In-depth studies of exoplanetary atmospheres are starting to become reality. In order to unveil their properties in detail, we need spectra with a higher S/N and also more sophisticated analysis methods. With high-resolution spectrographs, we can not only detect the sodium feature in the atmosphere of exoplanets, but also characterize it by studying its line profile. After finding a clearly w-shaped sodium line profile in the transmission spectrum of HD189733b, we investigated possible sources of contamination given by the star and tried to correct for these spurious deformations. By analyzing the single transmission spectra of HD189733b in the wavelength space, we show that the main sodium signal that causes the absorption in the transmission spectrum is centered on the stellar rest frame. We concentrate on two main stellar effects that contaminate the transmission spectrum: center-to-limb variations and stellar rotation. We show the effects on the line profile: while we correct for the CLV using simulated theoretical stellar spectra, we provide a new method, based directly on observational data, to correct for the RM contribution to the line profile of the retrieved transmission spectrum. We apply the corrections to the spectra of HD189733b. Our analysis shows line profiles of the Na D lines in the transmission spectrum that are narrower than reported previously. The correction of the D2 line, which is deeper than the D1, is probably still incomplete since the planetary radius is larger at this wavelength. A careful detrending from spurious stellar effects followed by an inspection in the velocity space is mandatory when studying the line profile of atmospheric features in the high-resolution transmission spectrum of exoplanets. Data with higher S/N coupled with improved atmospheric models will allow us to adapt the magnitude of the corrections of stellar effects in an iterative way.