The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets. IX. mu Ara, a system with four planets

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery and detailed orbital characterization of a four-planet system around mu Ara using high-precision radial-velocity measurements, confirming known planets and identifying a new one with improved orbital parameters.

Contribution

The study provides the first complete orbital solution for a four-planet system around mu Ara, including the discovery of a new planet and refined parameters for existing ones.

Findings

Confirmed the presence of mu Ara c with a 9.64-day period and 10.5 Earth masses.

Discovered mu Ara d, a new planet with a 310-day period and 0.52 Jupiter masses.

Refined orbital parameters for the longest-period planet, mu Ara e, confirming its planetary nature.

Abstract

The mu Ara planetary system is rather complex: It contains two already known planets, mu Ara b with P=640 days and mu Ara c with P=9.64 days, and a third companion on a wide but still poorly defined orbit. Even with three planets in the system, the data points keep anomalously high dispersion around the fitted solution. The high residuals are only partially due to the strong p-mode oscillations of the host star. We have therefore studied in this paper the possible presence of a fourth planet in the system. During the past years we have carried out additional and extremely precise radial-velocity measurements with the HARPS spectrograph. We provide in this paper a full orbital solution of the planetary system around mu Ara. It turns out to be the second system known to harbor 4 planetary companions. Thanks to the new data points acquired with HARPS we can confirm the presence of mu Ara c at P=9.64 days, which produces a coherent RV signal over more than two years. The new orbital fit sets the mass of mu Ara c to 10.5 M_Earth. Furthermore, we present the discovery of mu Ara d, a new planet on an almost circular 310 days-period and with a mass of 0.52 M_Jup. Finally, we give completely new orbital parameters for the longest-period planet, mu Ara e. It is the first time that this companion is constrained by radial-velocity data into a dynamical stable orbit, which leaves no doubt about its planetary nature. (Abridged).