209458b formed far from its present location and subsequently migrated inwards 11,13 . Other hot Jupiters may also show a richer chemistry than has been previously found, which would bring into question the frequently made assumption that they have solar-like and oxygen-rich compositions.We observed four transits of HD 209458b, the archetype of transiting hot Jupiters, with the near-infrared echelle spectrograph GIANO-B 14 , mounted at the 3.6-m Telescopio Nazionale Galileo located in La Palma, Spain. The transits happened on

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Context. Most of our current knowledge on planet formation is still based on the analysis of main sequence, solar-type stars. Conversely, detailed chemical studies of large samples of M dwarfs hosting planets are still missing. Aims. Correlations exist between the presence of different types of planets around FGK stars and metallicity, individual chemical abundance, and stellar mass. We aim to test whether or not these correlations still hold for the less-massive M dwarf stars. Methods to determine stellar abundances of M dwarfs from high-resolution optical spectra in a consistent way are still missing. The present work is a first attempt to fill this gap. Methods. We analyse a large sample of M dwarfs with and without known planetary companions in a coherent and homogeneous way. We develop for the first time a methodology to determine stellar abundances of elements other than iron for M dwarf stars from high-resolution optical spectra. Our methodology is based on the use of a principal component analysis and sparse Bayesian methods. We made use of a set of M dwarfs orbiting around an FGK primary with known abundances to train our methods. We applied our methods to derive stellar metalliticies and abundances of a large sample of M dwarfs observed within the framework of current radial-velocity surveys. We then used a sample of nearby FGK stars to cross-validate our technique by comparing the derived abundance trends in the M dwarf sample with those found on the FGK stars. Results. The metallicity distribution of the different subsamples reveals a correlation between the metallicities of M dwarfs and their probability of hosting giant planets. We also find a correlation between this latter probability and stellar mass. M dwarfs hosting low-mass planets do not seem to follow the so-called planet–metallicity correlation. We also find that the frequency of low-mass planets does not depend on the mass of the stellar host. These results appear to be in agreement with those of previous works. However, we note that for giant-planet hosts our metallicities predict a weaker planet–host metallicity correlation but a stronger mass-dependency than corresponding values derived from photometric results. We show for the first time that there seems to be no differences between M dwarfs with and without known planets in terms of their abundance distributions of elements different from iron. Conclusions. Our data show that low-mass stars with planets follow the same metallicity, mass, and abundance trends as their FGK counterparts, which are usually explained within the framework of core-accretion models.

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 to measure radial velocities is effectively invariant to translation. By projecting the radial velocities on to a subspace labelled by the observation identifiers and spanned by the amplitude coefficients of the ACF’s principal components, we can isolate and subtract velocity perturbations caused by stellar magnetic activity. We test the method on a 5-year time sequence of 853 daily 15-minute observations of the solar spectrum from the HARPS-N instrument and solar-telescope feed on the 3.58-m Telescopio Nazionale Galileo. After removal of the activity signals, the heliocentric solar velocity residuals are found to be Gaussian and nearly uncorrelated. We inject synthetic low-mass planet signals with amplitude K = 40 cm s−1 into the solar observations at a wide range of orbital periods. Projection into the orthogonal complement of the ACF subspace isolates these signals effectively from solar activity signals. Their semi-amplitudes are recovered with a precision of ∼ 6.6 cm s−1, opening the door to Doppler detection and characterization of terrestrial-mass planets around well-observed, bright main-sequence stars across a wide range of orbital periods.

Context. The discovery of Proxima b marked one of the most important milestones in exoplanetary science in recent years. Yet the limited precision of the available radial velocity data and the difficulty in modelling the stellar activity calls for a confirmation of the Earth-mass planet. Aims. We aim to confirm the presence of Proxima b using independent measurements obtained with the new ESPRESSO spectrograph, and refine the planetary parameters taking advantage of its improved precision. Methods. We analysed 63 spectroscopic ESPRESSO observations of Proxima (Gl 551) taken during 2019. We obtained radial velocity measurements with a typical radial velocity photon noise of 26 cm s−1. We combined these data with archival spectroscopic observations and newly obtained photometric measurements to model the stellar activity signals and disentangle them from planetary signals in the radial velocity (RV) data. We ran a joint Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis on the time series of the RV and full width half maximum of the cross-correlation function to model the planetary and stellar signals present in the data, applying Gaussian process regression to deal with the stellar activity signals. Results. We confirm the presence of Proxima b independently in the ESPRESSO data and in the combined ESPRESSO+ HARPS+UVES dataset. The ESPRESSO data on its own shows Proxima b at a period of 11.218 ± 0.029 days, with a minimum mass of 1.29 ± 0.13 M⊕. In the combined dataset we measure a period of 11.18427 ± 0.00070 days with a minimum mass of 1.173 ± 0.086 M⊕. We get a clear measurement of the stellar rotation period (87 ± 12 d) and its induced RV signal, but no evidence of stellar activity as a potential cause for the 11.2 days signal. We find some evidence for the presence of a second short-period signal, at 5.15 days with a semi-amplitude of only 40 cm s−1. If caused by a planetary companion, it would correspond to a minimum mass of 0.29 ± 0.08 M⊕. We find that forthe case of Proxima, the full width half maximum of the cross-correlation function can be used as a proxy for the brightness changes and that its gradient with time can be used to successfully detrend the RV data from part of the influence of stellar activity. The activity-induced RV signal in the ESPRESSO data shows a trend in amplitude towards redder wavelengths. Velocities measured using the red end of the spectrograph are less affected by activity, suggesting that the stellar activity is spot dominated. This could be used to create differential RVs that are activity dominated and can be used to disentangle activity-induced and planetary-induced signals. The data collected excludes the presence of extra companions with masses above 0.6 M⊕ at periods shorter than 50 days.