No further evidence for a transiting inner companion to the hot Jupiter HATS-50b

TL;DR

This study conducted extensive ground-based photometry to verify a tentative inner companion to hot Jupiter HATS-50b, ultimately finding no evidence for such a companion despite data quality suggesting it could have been detected.

Contribution

The paper provides a rigorous follow-up analysis that rules out the previously tentative inner companion signal around HATS-50b, refining our understanding of hot Jupiter system architectures.

Findings

No transit signal detected after 63 hours of observation.

Artificial transit injections confirmed data quality was sufficient for detection.

The tentative signal was not confirmed, suggesting no inner companion.

Abstract

Most hot Jupiter exoplanets do not have a nearby planetary companion in their planetary system. One remarkable exception is the system of WASP-47 with an inner and outer nearby companion to a hot Jupiter, providing detailed constrains on its formation history. In this work, we follow-up on a tentative photometric signal of a transiting inner companion to the hot Jupiter HATS-50b. If confirmed, it would be the third case of a hot Jupiter with an inner companion. 63 hours of new ground-based photometry were employed to rule out this signal to about 96% confidence. The injection of artificial transit signals showed the data to be of sufficient quality to reveal the potential photometric feature at high significance. However, no transit signal was found. The discrete pattern of observing blocks leaves a slight chance that the transit was missed.