Search for rings around Kepler planet candidates

DOI

We perform a systematic search for rings around 168 Kepler planet candidates with sufficient signal-to-noise ratios that are selected from all of the short-cadence data. We fit ringed and ringless models to their light curves and compare the fitting results to search for the signatures of planetary rings. First, we identify 29 tentative systems, for which the ringed models exhibit statistically significant improvement over the ringless models. The light curves of those systems are individually examined, but we are not able to identify any candidate that indicates evidence for rings. In turn, we find several mechanisms of false positives that would produce ringlike signals, and the null detection enables us to place upper limits on the size of the rings. Furthermore, assuming the tidal alignment between axes of the planetary rings and orbits, we conclude that the occurrence rate of rings larger than twice the planetary radius is less than 15%. Even though the majority of our targets are short-period planets, our null detection provides statistical and quantitative constraints on largely uncertain theoretical models of the origin, formation, and evolution of planetary rings.

Cone search capability for table J/AJ/155/206/catalog (Parameters and statistics of 14 systems with p<0.003 (table 1) , 0.003

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.51550206
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/155/206
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/AJ/155/206
Related Identifier https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/155/206
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/155/206
Provenance
Creator Aizawa M.; Masuda K.; Kawahara H.; Suto Y.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2018
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Exoplanet Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy