Detecting and Monitoring Tidal Dissipation of Hot Jupiters in the Era of SiTian

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potential of the SiTian Survey to detect and analyze tidal dissipation in hot Jupiters via Transit Timing Variations, using a dedicated pipeline and simulated data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel detection pipeline for SiTian, capable of identifying tidal dissipation in over 25,000 exoplanets, with simulated validation on known targets.

Findings

SiTian can detect TTVs with ~0.5-minute precision.

Simulated light curves recover input parameters within 1σ.

Tidal dissipation signals can be distinguished from other TTV sources.

Abstract

Transit Timing Variation (TTV) of hot Jupiters provides direct observational evidence of planet tidal dissipation. Detecting tidal dissipation through TTV needs high precision transit timings and long timing baselines. In this work, we predict and discuss the potential scientific contribution of SiTian Survey in detecting and analyzing exoplanet TTV. We develop a tidal dissipation detection pipeline for SiTian Survey that aims at time-domain astronomy with 72 1-meter optical telescopes. The pipeline includes the modules of light curve deblending, transit timing obtaining, and TTV modeling. SiTian is capable to detect more than 25,000 exoplanets among which we expect $\sim$50 sources showing evidence of tidal dissipation. We present detection and analysis of tidal dissipating targets, based on simulated SiTian light curves of XO-3b and WASP-161b. The transit light curve modeling gives consistent results within 1$\sigma$ to input values of simulated light curves. Also, the parameter uncertainties predicted by Monte-Carlo Markov Chain are consistent with the distribution obtained from simulating and modeling the light curve 1000 times. The timing precision of SiTian observations is $\sim$ 0.5 minutes with one transit visit. We show that differences between TTV origins, e.g., tidal dissipation, apsidal precession, multiple planets, would be significant, considering the timing precision and baseline. The detection rate of tidal dissipating hot Jupiters would answer a crucial question of whether the planet migrates at an early formation stage or random stages due to perturbations, e.g., planet scattering, secular interaction. SiTian identified targets would be constructive given that the sample would extend tenfold.