GJ 9404 b: a confirmed eccentric planet, and not a candidate

TL;DR

This paper confirms GJ 9404 b as a genuine, highly eccentric exoplanet using advanced detection methods that account for eccentricity, improving confidence in the planet's status over previous candidate assessments.

Contribution

It demonstrates the effectiveness of using Keplerian-based detection methods and Bayesian analysis to confirm eccentric exoplanets, surpassing traditional sine-based periodograms.

Findings

GJ 9404 b is a confirmed eccentric exoplanet.

Advanced detection methods improve confidence in exoplanet confirmation.

Eccentricity significantly impacts false alarm probability calculations.

Abstract

Eccentric orbits can be decomposed into a series of sine curves which affects how the false alarm probability is computed when using traditional periodograms on radial-velocity data. Here we show that a candidate exoplanet orbiting the M dwarf GJ 9404, identified by the HADES survey using data from the HARPS-N spectrograph, is in fact a bona-fide planet on a highly eccentric orbit. Far from a candidate, GJ 9404 b is detected with a high confidence. We reach our conclusion using two methods that assume Keplerian functions rather than sines to compute a detection probability, a Bayes Factor, and the FIP periodogram. We compute these using nested sampling with {\tt kima}.