Exploiting the transit timing capabilities of Ariel

TL;DR

This paper evaluates Ariel's transit timing capabilities using simulations, demonstrating its potential to measure exoplanet masses more precisely and detect external perturbers through Transit Timing Variations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed assessment of Ariel's TTV measurement precision and its impact on exoplanet mass determination and detection of external perturbers.

Findings

Ariel can measure transit times with about 12s precision for bright stars.

Transit timing improves planetary mass estimates by 20-30%.

Potential to detect external perturbers between Earth and Neptune masses.

Abstract

The Transit Timing Variation (TTV) technique is a powerful dynamical tool to measure exoplanetary masses by analysing transit light curves. We assessed the transit timing performances of the Ariel Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS1/2) based on the simulated light curve of a bright, 55 Cnc, and faint, K2-24, planet-hosting star. We estimated through a Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo analysis the transit time uncertainty at the nominal cadence of 1 second and, as a comparison, at a 30 and 60-s cadence. We found that at the nominal cadence Ariel will be able to measure the transit time with a precision of about 12s and 34s, for a star as bright as 55 Cnc and K2-24, respectively. We then ran dynamical simulations, also including the Ariel timing errors, and we found an improvement on the measurement of planetary masses of about $20-30\%$ in a K2-24-like planetary system through TTVs. We also simulated the conditions that allow us to detect the TTV signal induced by an hypothetical external perturber within the mass range between Earth and Neptune using 10 transit light curves by Ariel.