Assessing Exoplanetary System Architectures with DYNAMITE Including Observational Upper Limits

TL;DR

This paper enhances the DYNAMITE software to incorporate observational upper limits from RV, transit, and TTV data, improving predictions of hidden exoplanets and refining their expected properties in known systems.

Contribution

It integrates observational upper limits into DYNAMITE, enabling more accurate predictions of unseen planets and their characteristics in multi-planet systems.

Findings

RV limits strongly constrain additional planets within 10-100 days.

Limits truncate the expected size and mass of potential planets.

Transit and TTV limits inform about planet size and inclination distributions.

Abstract

The information gathered from observing planetary systems is not limited to the discovery of planets, but also includes the observational upper limits constraining the presence of any additional planets. Incorporating these upper limits into statistical analyses of individual systems can significantly improve our ability to find hidden planets in these systems by narrowing the parameter space in which to search. Here I include radial velocity (RV), transit, and transit timing variation (TTV) upper limits on additional planets in known multi-planet systems into the DYNAMITE software package and test their impact on the predicted planets for these systems. The tests are run on systems with previous DYNAMITE analysis and with updated known planet parameters in the 2-3 years since the original predictions. I find that the RV limits provide the strongest constraints on additional planets, lowering the likelihood of finding them within orbital periods of ~10-100 days in the inner planetary systems, as well as truncating the likely planet size (radius and/or mass) distributions towards planets smaller than those currently observed. Transit and TTV limits also provide information on the size and inclination distributions of both the known and predicted planets in the system. Utilizing these limits on a wider range of systems in the near future will help determine which systems might be able to host temperate terrestrial planets and contribute to the search for extraterrestrial biosignatures.