VALIDATION OFKEPLER'S MULTIPLE PLANET CANDIDATES. III. LIGHT CURVE ANALYSIS AND ANNOUNCEMENT OF HUNDREDS OF NEW MULTI-PLANET SYSTEMS

Abstract

The Kepler mission has discovered more than 2500 exoplanet candidates in the first two years of spacecraft data, with approximately 40% of those in candidate multi-planet systems. The high rate of multiplicity combined with the low rate of identified false positives indicates that the multiplanet systems contain very few false positive signals due to other systems not gravitationally bound to the target star. False positives in the multi-planet systems are identified and removed, leaving behind a residual population of candidate multi-planet transiting systems expected to have a false positive rate less than 1%. We present a sample of 340 planetary systems that contain 851 planets that are validated to substantially better than the 99% confidence level; the vast majority of these have not been previously verified as planets. We expect ∼two unidentified false positives making our sample of planet very reliable. We present fundamental planetary properties of our sample based on a comprehensive analysis of Kepler light curves, ground-based spectroscopy, and high-resolution imaging. Since we do not require spectroscopy or high-resolution imaging for validation, some of our derived parameters for a planetary system may be systematically incorrect due to dilution from light due to additional stars in the photometric aperture. Nonetheless, our result nearly doubles the number verified exoplanets.

SECURE MASS MEASUREMENTS FROM TRANSIT TIMING: 10 KEPLER EXOPLANETS BETWEEN 3 AND 8 M ⊕ WITH DIVERSE DENSITIES AND INCIDENT FLUXES

“…Two of the planetary candidates that transit KOI-1576 were validated by Rowe et al (2014) and Lissauer et al (2014). They were also confirmed by virtue of their detected TTVs by Xie (2014).…”

“…While the intermediate pair were confirmed by Steffen et al (2013) with anticorrelated TTVs at the expected periodicity, the innermost and outermost planets awaited validation by Rowe et al (2014) and have been named Kepler-49 d and Kepler-49 e, respectively. The period ratio of the innermost pair is 2.80, far from any first-or secondorder resonance.…”

“…Lissauer et al (2013) compared the transit times of three independent analyses of the light curve of Kepler-11 to identify outliers. For this study, we modeled the light curves using the methods described in Rowe et al (2014), using Keplerʼs complete dataset of 17 quarters including both long-cadence and any available short-cadence transit data. We test the sensitivity of our results by repeating our analysis using the transit times from the Q17 Holczer et al TTV catalog, with short-cadence times included where available (Holczer et al 2015, submitted).…”

The GAPS programme with HARPS-N at TNG

“…Being composed of two bright, near-twin stars with well-characterized planetary systems around them, it is one of only four known dual-planet-hosting binaries, together with HD 20782/1 (Jones et al 2006), Kepler 132 (Rowe et al 2014), andWASP 94 (Neveu-Vanmalle et al 2014). As we have mentioned above, planet-hosting binaries provide useful laboratories to try to distinguish the effects of the stellar system initial abundances that are due to the star-forming cloud from the possible effects of the planetary system on the star chemical composition.…”

Line-depth-ratio temperatures for the close binary ν Octantis: new evidence supporting the conjectured circumstellar retrograde planet

“…Collier Cameron et al 2007), and the Kepler mission (see e.g. Batalha et al 2011;Rowe et al 2014), most were discovered by the radial-velocity technique. Now the RV-detection fraction is closer to about 30 per cent of the total.…”