No evidence for activity correlations in the radial velocities of Kapteyn's star
Guillem Anglada-Escudé, Mikko Tuomi, Pamela Arriagada, Mathias Zechmeister, James S. Jenkins, Aviv Ofir, Stefan Dreizler, Enrico Gerlach, Chistopher J. Marvin, … 展开作者
Guillem Anglada-Escudé, Mikko Tuomi, Pamela Arriagada, Mathias Zechmeister, James S. Jenkins, Aviv Ofir, Stefan Dreizler, Enrico Gerlach, Chistopher J. Marvin, Ansgar Reiners, Sandra V. Jeffers, Paul Butler, Steven S. Vogt, Pedro J. Amado, Cristina Rodríguez-López, Zaira M. Berdiñas, Julien Morin, Jeffrey D. Crane, Stephen A. Shectman, Matías Díaz, Luis F. Sarmiento, Hugh R. A. Jones
Stellar activity may induce Doppler variability at the level of a few m/s which can then be confused by the Doppler signal of an exoplanet orbiting the star. To first order, linear correlations between radial velocity measurements and activity indices have been proposed to account for any such correlation. The likely presence of two super-Earths orbiting Kapteyn's star was reported in Anglada et al. (2014, MNRAS 443L, 89A), but this claim was recently challenged by Robertson et al. (2015, ApJ 805L, 22R) arguing evidence of a rotation period (143 days) at three times the orbital period of one of the proposed planets (Kapteyn's b, P=48.6 days), and the existence of strong linear correlations between its Doppler signal and activity data. By re-analyzing the data using global optimization methods and model comparison, we show that such claim is incorrect given that; 1) the choice of a rotation period at 143 days is unjustified, and 2) the presence of linear correlations is not supported by the data. We conclude that the radial velocity signals of Kapteyn's star remain more simply explained by the presence of two super-Earth candidates orbiting it. We also advocate for the use of global optimization procedures and objective arguments, instead of claims lacking of a minimal statistical support.
Radial-velocity (RV) planet searches are often polluted by signals caused by gas motion at the star's surface. Stellar activity can mimic or mask changes in the RVs caused by orbiting planets, resulting in false positives or missed detections. Here we use Gaussian process (GP) regression to disentangle the contradictory reports of planets vs. rotation artifacts in Kapteyn's star (Anglada-Escude et al. 2014, Robertson et al. 2015, Anglada-Escude et al. 2016). To model rotation, we use joint quasi-periodic kernels for the RV and H-alpha signals, requiring that their periods and correlation times…
Living with a Red Dwarf: Rotation and X-ray and Ultraviolet Properties of the Halo Population Kapteyn's Star
作为维拉诺瓦与红矮星共存计划的一部分，我们已经获得了第二族红矮星--卡普坦星的紫外线、X射线和光学数据。卡普坦星以其大自行和高RV（~+245 km s^-1）而引人注目。作为最近的Pop II红矮星，它是校准活动/辐照度-旋转-年龄关系的老年龄锚，也是恒星发电机和由此产生的X射线-缓慢旋转，几乎完全对流的红矮星紫外线辐射的重要测试平台。更糟糕的是，卡普坦星最近被报道拥有两个超级地球候选者，其中一个（卡普坦b）在宜居带内运行（Anglada-Escude et al. 2014 a，2015）。然而，Robertson等人（2015）质疑这颗行星的存在，因为它的轨道周期可能是活动的产物，与恒星的自转周期有关。由于其大的多普勒频移，可以可靠地测量重要的色球H I Lyman-α 1215.67 A发射线，因为它主要是从ISM和地冠源位移。莱曼α辐射在冷恒星的FUV区占主导地位。我们的测量可以帮助确定X射线-紫外线对卡普坦恒星所在行星的影响，以及对其他老红矮星所在行星的影响。恒星的X射线和莱曼α辐射对上层行星大气的加热和电离有很强的影响，并且可以（与恒星风和耀斑一起）侵蚀甚至消除行星大气。利用我们的程序恒星，我们已经重建了卡普坦星的行星过去暴露于日冕-色球XUV辐射的时间。
For years, the standard procedure to measure radial velocities (RVs) of spectral observations consisted in cross-correlating the spectra with a binary mask, that is, a simple stellar template that contains information on the position and strength of stellar absorption lines. The cross-correlation function (CCF) profiles also provide several indicators of stellar activity. We present a methodology to first build weighted binary masks and, second, to compute the CCF of spectral observations with these masks from which we derive radial velocities and activity indicators. These methods are impleme…
Context. To enable radial velocity (RV) precision on the order of ~0.1 m/s required for the detection of Earth-like exoplanets orbiting solar-type stars, the main obstacle lies in mitigating the impact of stellar activity. Aims. This study investigates the dependence of derived RVs with respect to the formation temperature of spectral line segments. Methods. Using spectral synthesis, we compute for each observed wavelength point of unblended spectral lines the stellar temperature below which 50% of the emergent flux originates. We can then construct RV time series for different temperature ran…
Context. Although the new generation of radial-velocity (RV) instruments such as ESPRESSO are expected to reach the long-term precision required to find other earths, the RV measurements are contaminated by some signal from stellar activity. This makes these detections hard. Aims. On real observations, we here demonstrate for the first time the effect of stellar activity on the RV of individual spectral lines. Recent studies have shown that this is probably the key for mitigating this perturbing signal. Results. We estimate that at least 89% of the lines that appear in the spectrum of alpha Ce…
The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets. XXXI. Magnetic activity cycles in solar-type stars: statistics and impact on precise radial velocities
上下文通过径向速度测量寻找太阳系外行星依赖于恒星光球的稳定性。目标。我们的目标是表征磁活动周期的统计特性，并研究它们对光谱测量的影响，如径向速度，线平分线和线形。方法.我们使用的数据从HARPS高精度行星搜索样本包括304 FGK恒星超过7年。我们获得高精度的Ca II H & K色球活动测量，并将其转换为R'HK指数使用更新的校准考虑到恒星金属丰度。我们研究R'HK变异作为时间的函数，并寻找可能的相关性与径向速度和线形参数。结果我们根据Ca II H & K变化的幅度和时间尺度对恒星进行分类，并尽可能确定活动周期。我们发现，在太阳附近，39 +/-8%的老太阳型恒星没有任何活动周期（或者只有非常弱的活动周期），而61 +/-8%的恒星有活动周期。非循环星几乎只在G矮星中发现，平均活动水平log R'HK <-4.95。磁周期振幅一般随活动水平的降低而降低。相当一部分恒星的径向速度和线形参数与活动周期相关，表现出很小的变化。径向速度对磁循环的敏感性随着温度的升高而增加，而晚K矮星几乎不敏感。结论.活动周期确实会引起长周期、低幅度的径向速度变化，其水平高达~25 m/s。因此，在寻找长周期系外行星时必须谨慎。然而，这些影响可以被校正到高精度的径向速度数据，同时测量钙II H & K通量和线形参数的去趋势。（节录）
The radial velocity method is one of the most successful techniques for the discovery and characterization of exoplanets. Modern spectrographs promise measurement precision of ~0.2-0.5 m/s for an ideal target star. However, the intrinsic variability of stellar spectra can mimic and obscure true planet signals at these levels. Rajpaul et al. (2015) and Jones et al. (2017) proposed applying a physically motivated, multivariate Gaussian process (GP) to jointly model the apparent Doppler shift and multiple indicators of stellar activity as a function of time, so as to separate the planetary signal…
Stellar activity is the main limitation to the detection of Earth-twins using the RV technique. Despite many efforts in trying to mitigate the effect of stellar activity using empirical and statistical techniques, it seems that we are facing an obstacle that will be extremely difficult to overcome using current techniques. In this paper, we investigate a novel approach to derive precise RVs considering the wealth of information present in high-resolution spectra. This new method consists in building a master spectrum from all observations and measure the RVs of each spectral line in a spectrum…
Searches for periodicity in time series are often done with models of periodic signals, whose statistical significance is assessed via false alarm probabilities or Bayes factors. However, a statistically significant periodic model might not originate from a strictly periodic source. In astronomy in particular, one expects transient signals that show periodicity for a certain amount of time before vanishing. This situation is encountered for instance in the search for planets in radial velocity data. While planetary signals are expected to have a stable phase, amplitude and frequency - except w…
Nearby stars are prime targets for exoplanet searches and characterization using a variety of detection techniques. Combining constraints from the complementary detection methods of high contrast imaging (HCI) and radial velocity (RV) can further constrain the planetary architectures of these systems because these methods place limits at different regions of the companion mass and semi-major axis parameter space. We aim to constrain the planetary architectures from the combination of HCI and RV data for 6 nearby stars within 6 pc: $τ$ Ceti, Kapteyn's star, AX Mic, 40 Eri, HD 36395, and HD 4258…
The radial-velocity (RV) method is one of the most successful in the detection of exoplanets, but is hindered by the intrinsic RV variations of the star, which can easily mimic or hide true planetary signals. kima is a package for the detection and characterization of exoplanets using RV data. It fits a sum of Keplerian curves to a timeseries of RV measurements and calculates the evidence for models with a fixed number Np of Keplerian signals, or after marginalising over Np. Moreover, kima can use a GP with a quasi-periodic kernel as a noise model, to deal with activity-induced signals. The hy…
A rocky planet orbiting LHS 1140 with a period of 24.7d has been found based on the discovery of transits in its light and high precision radial velocity data (Dittmann et al. 2017). This discovery by two independent methods is an observational tour-de-force, however, we find that a conservative analysis of the data gives a different solution. A three planet system is apparent in the radial velocity data based on our diagnosis of stellar activity. We encourage further targeted photometric and radial velocity observations in order to constrain the mini-Neptune and super-Earth mass objects appar…
Stellar activity due to different processes (magnetic activity, photospheric flows) affects the measurement of radial velocities (RV). Radial velocities have been widely used to detect exoplanets, although the stellar signal significantly impacts the detection and characterisation performance, especially for low mass planets. On the other hand, RV time series are also very rich in information on stellar processes. In this lecture, I review the context of RV observations, describe how radial velocities are measured, and the properties of typical observations. I present the challenges represente…
Inhibition of the convective blueshift in active regions is a major contribution to the radial velocity variations, at least for solar-like stars. A common technique to correct for this component is to model the RV as a linear function of chromospheric emission, because both are strongly correlated with the coverage by plages. This correction is not perfect: the aim of the present study is to understand the limits of this correction and to improve it. We investigate these questions by analysing a large set of synthetic time series corresponding to old main sequence F6-K4 stars modelled using a…
A Machine Learning approach for correcting radial velocities using physical observables
Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (ICE, CSIC)（空间科学研究所（西班牙国家研究委员会））；Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC)（加泰罗尼亚空间研究所）；University of Warwick（华威大学）；Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC)（安达卢西亚天体物理研究所（西班牙国家研究委员会））；The Open University（开放大学）；Max Planck Institut für Sonnensystemforschung (MPS)（马克斯·普朗克太阳系研究所）；Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg（海德堡大学天文中心）；Georg-August-Universität Göttingen（哥廷根大学）
Stellar activity is one of the primary limitations to the detection of low-mass exoplanets using the radial-velocity (RV) technique. We propose to estimate the variations in shape of the CCF by fitting a Skew Normal (SN) density which, unlike the commonly employed Normal density, includes a skewness parameter to capture the asymmetry of the CCF induced by stellar activity and the convective blueshift. The performances of the proposed method are compared to the commonly employed Normal density using both simulations and real observations, with different levels of activity and signal-to-noise ra…
Context. Variability caused by stellar activity represents a challenge to the discovery and characterization of terrestrial exoplanets and complicates the interpretation of atmospheric planetary signals. Aims. We aim to use a detailed modeling tool to reproduce the effect of active regions on radial velocity measurements, which aids the identification of the key parameters that have an impact on the induced variability. Methods. We analyzed the effect of stellar activity on radial velocities as a function of wavelength by simulating the impact of the properties of spots, shifts induced by conv…
We present updated radial-velocity (RV) analyses of the AU Mic system. AU Mic is a young (22 Myr) early M dwarf known to host two transiting planets - $P_{b}\sim8.46$ days, $R_{b}=4.38_{-0.18}^{+0.18}\ R_{\oplus}$, $P_{c}\sim18.86$ days, $R_{c}=3.51_{-0.16}^{+0.16}\ R_{\oplus}$. With visible RVs from CARMENES-VIS, CHIRON, HARPS, HIRES, {\sc {\textsc{Minerva}}}-Australis, and TRES, as well as near-infrared (NIR) RVs from CARMENES-NIR, CSHELL, IRD, iSHELL, NIRSPEC, and SPIRou, we provide a $5σ$ upper limit to the mass of AU Mic c of $M_{c}\leq20.13\ M_{\oplus}$ and present a refined mass of AU M…
Accurately modeling effects from stellar activity is a key step in detecting radial velocity signals of low-mass and long-period exoplanets. Radial velocities from stellar activity are dominated by magnetic active regions that move in and out of sight as the star rotates, producing signals with timescales related to the stellar rotation period. Methods to characterize radial velocity periodograms assume that peaks from magnetic active regions will typically occur at the stellar rotation period or a related harmonic. However, with surface features unevenly spaced and evolving over time, signals…
Context. Radial velocity (RV) measurements induced by the presence of planets around late-type stars are contaminated by stellar signals that are of the order of a few meters per second in amplitude, even for the quietest stars. Those signals are induced by acoustic oscillations, convective granulation patterns, active regions co-rotating with the stellar surface, and magnetic activity cycles. Aims. This study investigates the properties of all coherent stellar signals seen on the Sun on timescales up to its sidereal rotational period. By combining HARPS and HARPS-N solar data spanning several…
We present a comprehensive analysis of 10 years of HARPS radial velocities of the K2V dwarf star HD 13808, which has previously been reported to host two unconfirmed planet candidates. We use the state-of-the-art nested sampling algorithm PolyChord to compare a wide variety of stellar activity models, including simple models exploiting linear correlations between RVs and stellar activity indicators, harmonic models for the activity signals, and a more sophisticated Gaussian process regression model. We show that the use of overly-simplistic stellar activity models that are not well-motivated p…
The radial velocity method is one of the most successful techniques for detecting exoplanets. It works by detecting the velocity of a host star induced by the gravitational effect of an orbiting planet, specifically the velocity along our line of sight, which is called the radial velocity of the star. Low-mass planets typically cause their host star to move with radial velocities of 1 m/s or less. By analyzing a time series of stellar spectra from a host star, modern astronomical instruments can in theory detect such planets. However, in practice, intrinsic stellar variability (e.g., star spot…
Stellar magnetic activity produces time-varying distortions in the photospheric line profiles of solar-type stars. These lead to systematic errors in high-precision radial-velocity measurements, which limit efforts to discover and measure the masses of low-mass exoplanets with orbital periods of more than a few tens of days. We present a new data-driven method for separating Doppler shifts of dynamical origin from apparent velocity variations arising from variability-induced changes in the stellar spectrum. We show that the autocorrelation function (ACF) of the cross-correlation function used …
Measured spectral shifts due to intrinsic stellar variability (e.g., pulsations, granulation) and activity (e.g., spots, plages) are the largest source of error for extreme precision radial velocity (EPRV) exoplanet detection. Several methods are designed to disentangle stellar signals from true center-of-mass shifts due to planets. The EXPRES Stellar Signals Project (ESSP) presents a self-consistent comparison of 22 different methods tested on the same extreme-precision spectroscopic data from EXPRES. Methods derived new activity indicators, constructed models for mapping an indicator to the …
Magnetic activity and surface flows at different scales pertub radial velocity measurements. This affects the detectability of low-mass exoplanets. In these flows, the effect of supergranulation is not as well characterized as the other flows, and we wish to estimate its effect on the detection of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. We produced time series of radial velocities due to oscillations, granulation, and supergranulation, and estimated the detection limit for a G2 star and a period of 300 days. We also studied in detail the behavior of the power when the signa…
Research in extrasolar-planet science is data-driven. With the advent of radial-velocity instruments like HARPS and HARPS-N, and transit space missions like Kepler, our ability to discover and characterise extrasolar planets is no longer limited by instrumental precision but by our ability to model the data accurately. This chapter presents the models that describe radial-velocity measurements and transit light curves. I begin by deriving the solution of the two-body problem and from there, the equations describing the radial velocity of a planet-host star and the distance between star and pla…
Accounting for the effects of stellar magnetic phenomena is indispensable to fully exploit radial velocities (RVs). Correlated time variations are often mitigated by Gaussian processes (GP). They rely on fitting kernel functions that are motivated on mathematical grounds, and whose physical interpretation is often elusive. We aim to establish a connection between stellar activity affecting RVs and their correlations with physical parameters, and compare this connection with kernels used in the literature. We use simple activity models to investigate the relationship between the physical proces…
Mitigating stellar radial velocity jitter using orthogonal activity indices and a time-aware neural network
Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (ICE, CSIC)（空间科学研究所）；Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC)（加泰罗尼亚太空研究所）；Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona (UB)（巴塞罗那大学物理学院）；University of Warwick（华威大学）；Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学）；Barcelona School of Economics（巴塞罗那经济管理学院）
We present high resolution near-infrared spectropolarimetric observations using the SPIRou instrument at CFHT during a transit of the recently detected young planet AU Mic b, with supporting spectroscopic data from iSHELL at IRTF. We detect Zeeman signatures in the Stokes V profiles, and measure a mean longitudinal magnetic field of $\overline{B}_\ell=46.3\pm0.7$~G. Rotationally modulated magnetic spots likely cause long-term variations of the field with a slope of $d{B_\ell}/dt=-108.7\pm7.7$~G/d. We apply the cross-correlation technique to measure line profiles and obtain radial velocities th…
The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets. XXX. Planetary systems around stars with solar-like magnetic cycles and short-term activity variation
