A Gaussian Process Regression Reveals No Evidence for Planets Orbiting Kapteyn's Star

TL;DR

This study uses Gaussian process regression to analyze radial velocity data of Kapteyn's star, concluding that previously claimed planets are likely artifacts caused by stellar rotation and activity rather than actual planets.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates the effectiveness of Gaussian process regression with joint quasi-periodic kernels in distinguishing stellar activity from planetary signals in RV data.

Findings

No evidence of planets orbiting Kapteyn's star after accounting for stellar activity.

Stellar rotation period identified as 125 days, active-region lifetime as 694 days.

Previously reported planets are artifacts of star rotation and activity.

Abstract

Radial-velocity (RV) planet searches are often polluted by signals caused by gas motion at the star's surface. Stellar activity can mimic or mask changes in the RVs caused by orbiting planets, resulting in false positives or missed detections. Here we use Gaussian process (GP) regression to disentangle the contradictory reports of planets vs. rotation artifacts in Kapteyn's star (Anglada-Escude et al. 2014, Robertson et al. 2015, Anglada-Escude et al. 2016). To model rotation, we use joint quasi-periodic kernels for the RV and H-alpha signals, requiring that their periods and correlation timescales be the same. We find that the rotation period of Kapteyn's star is 125 days, while the characteristic active-region lifetime is 694 days. Adding a planet to the RV model produces a best-fit orbital period of 100~years, or 10 times the observing time baseline, indicating that the observed RVs are best explained by star rotation only. We also find no significant periodic signals in residual RV data sets constructed by subtracting off realizations of the best-fit rotation model and conclude that both previously reported "planets" are artifacts of the star's rotation and activity. Our results highlight the pitfalls of using sinusoids to model quasi-periodic rotation signals.