Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy

, Volume 117, Issue 1, pp 75–89 | Cite as

Detection of Earth-mass and super-Earth Trojan planets using transit timing variation method

  • Nader Haghighipour
  • Stephanie Capen
  • Tobias C. Hinse
Original Article
First Online:
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:

Abstract

We have carried out an extensive study of the possibility of the detection of Earth-mass and super-Earth Trojan planets using transit timing variation method with the Kepler space telescope. We have considered a system consisting of a transiting Jovian-type planet in a short period orbit, and determined the induced variations in its transit timing due to an Earth-mass/super-Earth Trojan planet. We mapped a large section of the phase space around the 1:1 mean-motion resonance and identified regions corresponding to several other mean-motion resonances where the orbit of the planet would be stable. We calculated transit timing variations (TTVs) for different values of the mass and orbital elements of the transiting and perturbing bodies as well as the mass of central star, and identified orbital configurations of these objects (ranges of their orbital elements and masses) for which the resulted TTVs would be within the range of the variations of the transit timing of Kepler’s planetary candidates. Results of our study indicate that in general, the amplitudes of the TTVs fall within the detectable range of timing precision obtained from the Kepler’s long-cadence data, and depending on the parameters of the system, their magnitudes may become as large as a few hours. The probability of detection is higher for super-Earth Trojans with slightly eccentric orbits around short-period Jovian-type planets with masses slightly smaller than Jupiter. We present the details of our study and discuss the implications of its results.

Keywords

Planetary systems Stability analysis MEGNO Phase space structure Resonance Periodic orbits Numerical method Kepler space telescope TTVs 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

N.H. acknowledges support from NASA EXOB Grant NNX09AN05G and from the NASA Astrobiology Institute under Cooperative Agreement NNA09DA77A at the Institute for Astronomy (IfA), University of Hawaii. S.C. acknowledges support from the IfA NSF-funded REU program. T.C.H. acknowledges support from the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) Grant 2012-1-410-02 and the Korea Research Council for Fundamental Science and Technology (KRCF) through the Young Research Scientist Fellowship Program. The MEGNO computations were carried out at the SFI/HEA Irish Center for High-End Computing (ICHEC) Center and the PLUTO computing cluster at KASI. T.C.H. would also like to thank the Institute for Astronomy and the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of Hawaii-Manoa for their hospitality during the course of this project.

Supplementary material

10569_2013_9510_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (265 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (pdf 264 KB)

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  • Nader Haghighipour
    • 1
  • Stephanie Capen
    • 2
  • Tobias C. Hinse
    • 3
    • 4
  1. 1.Institute for Astronomy and NASA Astrobiology InstituteUniversity of Hawai’i-ManoaHonoluluUSA
  2. 2.Department of EducationUniversity of Hawai’i-ManoaHonoluluUSA
  3. 3.Korea Astronomy and Space Science InstituteDaejeonRepublic of Korea
  4. 4.Armagh ObservatoryArmaghUK

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