CaRM: Exploring the chromatic Rossiter-McLaughlin effect. The cases of HD 189733b and WASP-127b

TL;DR

CaRM is a semi-automatic tool that extracts broadband transmission spectra of transiting exoplanets by analyzing the chromatic Rossiter-McLaughlin effect in high-resolution spectroscopic data, demonstrated on HD 189733b and WASP-127b.

Contribution

Introduces CaRM, a new semi-automatic code for retrieving exoplanet transmission spectra from high-resolution spectroscopic observations using the chromatic Rossiter-McLaughlin effect.

Findings

Successfully retrieved transmission spectra of HD 189733b and WASP-127b.

CaRM can use multiple RM models and mitigate radial velocity perturbations.

Demonstrated applicability with HARPS and ESPRESSO data.

Abstract

In this paper we introduce CaRM, a semi-automatic code for the retrieval of broadband transmission spectra of transiting planets through the chromatic Rossiter-McLaughlin method. We applied it to HARPS and ESPRESSO observations of two exoplanets to retrieve the transmission spectrum and we analyze its fitting transmission models. We used the strong radius dependence of the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect amplitude, caused by planetary companions, to measure the apparent radius change caused by the exoplanet atmosphere. In order to retrieve the transmission spectrum, the radial velocities, which were computed over wavelength bins that encompass several spectral orders, were used to simultaneously fit the Keplerian motion and the RM effect. From this, the radius ratio was computed as a function of the wavelength, which allows one to retrieve the low-resolution broadband transmission spectrum of a given exoplanet. CaRM offers the possibility to use two Rossiter-McLaughlin models taken from ARoME and PyAstronomy, associated with a Keplerian function to fit radial velocities during transit observations automatically. Furthermore it offers the possibility to use some methods that could, in theory, mitigate the effect of perturbation in the radial velocities during transits. The CaRM code allows one to retrieve the transmission spectrum of a given exoplanet using minimal user interaction. We demonstrate that it allows one to compute the low-resolution broadband transmission spectra of exoplanets observed using high-resolution spectrographs such as HARPS and ESPRESSO.