The Sensitivity of Eclipse Mapping to Planetary Rotation

TL;DR

This paper develops a framework to understand how planetary rotation and obliquity affect eclipse mapping of exoplanets, highlighting the importance of priors and data quality in interpreting brightness variations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to analyze the influence of rotation and obliquity on eclipse mapping, providing tools to disentangle these effects from observational data.

Findings

Brightness variability can result from various rotation rates and obliquities.

At JWST-like signal-to-noise, confusion in map structure is limited to extreme rotation rates.

Constraints on rotation and obliquity depend on data quality and prior assumptions.

Abstract

Mapping exoplanets across phases and during secondary eclipse is a powerful technique for characterizing Hot Jupiters in emission. Since these planets are expected to rotate about axes normal to their orbital planes, with rotation periods synchronized with their orbital periods, mapping provides a direct correspondence between orbital phase and planetary longitude. We develop a framework to understand the information content of planets where their rotation states are not well constrained, by constructing bases of light curves across different rotation rates and obliquities that are orthogonal in integrated flux across secondary eclipse. These demonstrate that brightness variability during eclipse may arise from a variety of rotation rates, obliquities, and map structures, requiring priors to properly disentangle each of these components. By modeling eclipse observations of the Warm Jupiter HAT-P-18 b we demonstrate that, at a signal-to-noise equivalent to $\sim 10$ orbits with JWST, confusion about map structure is likely a concern only at the upper physical limits of possible rotation rates. Even without priors, one may nevertheless be able to put an order-of-magnitude constraint on rotation rate by determining at what rates the fitted map complexity is minimized, a prescription whose efficacy increases if out-of-eclipse data are available to isolate the effects of rotation. Finally, in the limit of maps with longitudinal symmetry, the projected obliquity in the plane of the sky determines the information available during eclipse, ranging from non-detections of structure to a basic constraint on hemispherical asymmetry and orientation depending on the obliquity angle.