The BEBOP radial-velocity survey for circumbinary planets I. Eight years of CORALIE observations of 47 single-line eclipsing binaries and abundance constraints on the masses of circumbinary planets

TL;DR

The BEBOP survey used long-term radial velocity observations of eclipsing binaries to search for circumbinary planets, setting initial constraints on their abundance and orbital inclinations despite no detections.

Contribution

This study introduces the BEBOP radial velocity survey targeting eclipsing binaries, providing new constraints on circumbinary planet occurrence and orbital inclination distribution.

Findings

No planetary companions detected in the survey.

Sensitivity to planets down to 0.1 Jupiter masses.

Constraints on the abundance and inclination dispersion of circumbinary planets.

Abstract

We introduce the BEBOP radial velocity survey for circumbinary planets. We initiated this survey using the CORALIE spectrograph on the Swiss Euler Telescope at La Silla, Chile. An intensive four year observing campaign commenced in 2013, targeting 47 single-lined eclipsing binaries drawn from the EBLM survey for low mass eclipsing binaries. Our specific use of binaries with faint M dwarf companions avoids spectral contamination, providing observing conditions akin to single stars. By combining new BEBOP observations with existing ones from the EBLM programme, we report on the results of 1519 radial velocity measurements over timespans as long as eight years. For the best targets we are sensitive to planets down to 0.1 Jupiter masses, and our median sensitivity is 0.4 Jupiter masses. In this initial survey we do not detect any planetary mass companions. Nonetheless, we present the first constraints on the abundance of circumbinary companions, as a function of mass and period. A comparison of our results to Kepler's detections indicates a dispersion of planetary orbital inclinations less than ~10 degrees.