Modeling Stellar Jitter for the Detection of Earth-Mass Exoplanets via Precision Radial Velocity Measurements

TL;DR

This paper develops a physics-based data analysis method to distinguish planetary signals from stellar variability in high-precision radial velocity measurements, aiding the detection of Earth-mass exoplanets.

Contribution

It introduces a 3D radiative modeling approach to quantify stellar disturbances affecting radial velocity signals for improved exoplanet detection.

Findings

Quantified stellar disturbances in HD121504 using 3D radiative modeling.

Generated synthetic spectroscopic observations to analyze stellar variability.

Provided statistical properties of turbulent plasma affecting measurements.

Abstract

The detection of Earth-size exoplanets is a technological and data analysis challenge. Future progress in Earth-mass exoplanet detection is expected from the development of extreme precision radial velocity measurements. Increasing radial velocity precision requires developing a new physics-based data analysis methodology to discriminate planetary signals from host-star-related effects, taking stellar variability and instrumental uncertainties into account. In this work, we investigate and quantify stellar disturbances of the planet-hosting solar-type star HD121504 from 3D radiative modeling obtained with the StellarBox code. The model has been used for determining statistical properties of the turbulent plasma and obtaining synthetic spectroscopic observations for several Fe I lines at different locations on the stellar disk to mimic high-resolution spectroscopic observations.