Exoplanets

Avani Gowardhan, IISER Pune 20091047

Report for PHY334 - Astronomy and Astrophysics.

An exoplanet has been defined as a planet outside our solar system. The IAU defines them as objects with masses below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium (~13Mj) that orbit stars or stellar remnants (regardless of formation). They are of great interest for understanding the mechanisms of planet formation, and to SETI observers and astrobiologists. So far, about 763 exoplanets have been discovered (in 611 planetary systems and 101 multiple planetary systems). Most of the discovered exoplanets lie within 300 light years of the Solar System and more than 50% of Sun-like stars seem to have at least one planet. Also, most of the detected planets have masses greater than the mass of Jupiter. This reflects a sampling bias - most known exoplanets are giant planets since they are easier to observe. Various methods of detection have been developed, most of them indirect methods. If we assume that a planet is orbiting around a star, then we can infer its parameters indirectly by their effect on their host star.

I. Direct detection
1. Imaging : This is the most technologically challenging method. To see the planet, the

observed no more than about thirty exoplanets (as of November 2011).

starlight must be dimmed or masked in some way so as to enable observers to see the planet. One method is to use infrared radiation, rather than visible light. The order of magnitude difference between the star and the planet is far more in the the optical than in the infrared. Another method is to physically block out the starlight, using a coronograph that masks the bright central core of the star, leaving only the corona, the outer plasma region of the stars atmosphere, visible and so allowing any nearby planets to shine through . This is done using a coronograph. T elescopes have directly

Fig. 1 - Direct image of exoplanets around the star HR8799 using a vortex coronograph. [2 ]

II. Indirect detection

common centre-of-mass. So there will be a slight backward-forward motion of the observed star around its centre-of-mass. This is detected via spectroscopy ( using the Doppler shift in the observed spectrum of the star). The periodic changes in the stars radial velocity depend on the planets mass and the inclination of its orbit to our line of sight. It can only give us a lower bound on the mass of the planet, and so we can calculate the true mass only when it is used in conjunction with other methods. So far, 358 extrasolar planets that were detected by radial velocity method. It is the most successful method to date. The method is independent of distance, but requires high signal-to-noise signals to give high precision, and so is generally used only for relatively nearby stars ~ 160 light-years from Earth.
1. Radial velocity tracking : The planet and star system will be moving around the

Fig.2 - Red and blue doppler shifting of radiation from star with exoplanet system.

2. Pulsar timing : There is a change in the time period of pulsars due to the presence of the planet. It is a very sensitive method, capable of detecting extra solar planets with masses ~ 1/10th Earth's mass. However, it is not very easy to apply, since pulsars are relatively rare, and of little interest to astrobiologists, since identifiable forms of life cannot survive in such high radiation. The first three exoplanets were detected with this method in 1992, but to date only a total of 16 have been detected. 3. Transits : When a planet moves across our sight to the star, there is a decrease in the observed brightness of the star that we can detect. Using this method, we can estimate the radius of the star, and via the light passing through the atmosphere of the star, using spectroscopy determine the composition of the planet's atmosphere.

Fig.3 - The transit light curves of first five exoplanets discovered by KEPLER mission. [5]

4. Gravitational microlensing : The gravitational pull of a large object bends the light and amplifies it, acting like a magnifying lens. When light from the background object travels towards Earth, its path is bent as it moves close to any large foreground object that is aligned with the background light source. As the microlensing effect works on radiation from the background source, this technique can be used to study intervening objects that emit little or no light, such as black holes, or planets around distant stars. If the lens is a star-planet system, the amplifed light curve from the background source will contain an additional side peak. The disadvantage of the microlensing technique is that the effect happens only once, as it relies on a unique chance alignment of the foreground and background stars, and so measurements must be checked using other methods. About 14 exoplanets have been discovered using this method.

Fig. 4 - Expected graph of microlensing event. Courtesy - Google.

5. Polarimetry : The light reflected from the planet can be distinguished from the stars light, because it is fractionally polarised (the planes of the reflected light waves are oriented in the same plane). However this is hightly dependant on the atmosphere of the exoplanet. 6. Nulling interferometry : Here, light waves received by several telescopes are combined to give a proportionately higher-resolution image. It can be used to find exoplanets because the light signals received by each telescope from the star can be combined so that the waves cancel out, leaving just the image of the orbiting planets. 7. Transit Timing Variation (TTV) : This is a method used to detect more than one exoplanet rotating around the same host star. The other planets perturb the orbit, and so the transit time period, of the planet already seen. And so properties of the other planet may be inferred.
8. Astrometry : If we can directly see the wobble in the star's position in the sky over

time, i.e. the motion of a star due to the gravitational influence of a planet, we can figure out the mass of the planet. There have been no confirmed detections using this method since very high sensitivity is required.

CURRENT & FUTURE PROJECTS

Most confirmed extrasolar planets have been found using ground-based telescopes. COROT (launched December 2006) and Kepler (launched March 2009) are the two currently active space missions dedicated to searching for extrasolar planets. Hubble Space Telescope and MOST have also found or confirmed a few planets. The Gaia mission will be launched in March 2013 and will use astrometry to determine the true masses nearby exoplanets.

References
[1] http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/ [2] Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet [3] The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia http://exoplanet.eu [4] Extrasolar planets - Jack J. Lissauer [5] http://solarsystem.nasa.gov