Transit Light-curves for Exomoons: Analytical Formalism

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical model for transit light curves of exomoons orbiting exoplanets, considering various orbital configurations, to aid future detection efforts with next-generation telescopes.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analytical formalism for modeling exomoon transit light curves, accounting for different orbital alignments and parameters.

Findings

Derived formulas for all possible star-planet-moon alignments.

Presented representative light curves based on the formalism.

Provides a tool for analyzing exomoon transits in upcoming observations.

Abstract

The photometric transit method has been the most effective method to detect and characterize exoplanets as several ground-based as well as space-based survey missions have discovered thousands of exoplanets using this method. With the advent of the upcoming next generation large telescopes, the detection of exomoons in a few of these exoplanetary systems is very plausible. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analytical formalism in order to model the transit light curves for such moon hosting exoplanets. In order to achieve analytical formalism, we have considered circular orbit of the exomoon around the host planet, which is indeed the case for tidally locked moons. The formalism uses the radius and orbital properties of both the host planet and its moon as model parameters. The co-alignment or non-coalignment of the orbits of the planet and the moon is parameterized using two angular parameters and thus can be used to model all the possible orbital alignments for a star-planet-moon system. This formalism also provides unique and direct solutions to every possible star-planet-moon three circular body alignments. Using the formula derived, a few representative light curves are also presented.