A search for transiting planets around FGKM dwarfs and sub-giants in the TESS Full Frame Images of the Southern ecliptic hemisphere

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new pipeline and classifier to analyze TESS data, identifying 396 transiting planet candidates around FGKM stars, including many new detections, and provides a comprehensive catalog for further study.

Contribution

Development of DIAmante pipeline and a Random Forest classifier for improved detection of transiting planets in TESS FFIs, with extensive new candidate discoveries and a publicly available catalog.

Findings

396 transiting planetary candidates identified, 252 are new

Detected planets range from 1 to 2.6 Jupiter radii and periods from 0.25 to 105 days

Found 15 new single transit events and a new multi-planet system

Abstract

In this work, we present the analysis of 976 814 FGKM dwarf and sub-giant stars in the TESS Full Frame Images (FFIs) of the Southern ecliptic hemisphere. We present a new pipeline, DIAmante, developed to extract optimized, multi-sector photometry from TESS FFIs and a classifier, based on the Random Forest technique, trained to discriminate plausible transiting planetary candidates from common false positives. A new statistical model was developed to provide the probability of correct identification of the source of variability. We restricted the planet search to the stars located in the least crowded regions of the sky and identified 396 transiting planetary candidates among which 252 are new detections. The candidates' radius distribution ranges between 1 R$\rm_{\oplus}$ and 2.6 R$\rm_J$ with median value of 1 R$\rm_J$ and the period distribution ranges between 0.25 days and 105 days with median value of 3.8 days. The sample contains four long period candidates (P>50 days) one of which is new and 64 candidates with periods between 10 and 50 days (42 new ones). In the small planet radius domain (R<4 R$\rm_{\oplus}$) we found 39 candidates among which 15 are new detections. Additionally, we present 15 single transit events (14 new ones), a new candidate multi-planetary system and a novel candidate around a known TOI. By using {\it Gaia} dynamical constraints we found that 70 objects show evidence of binarity. We release a catalog of the objects we analyzed and the corresponding lightcurves and diagnostic figures through the MAST and ExoFOP portals.