Bibliographic Details
| Title: |
A search for transit timing variations and orbital decay in WASP-46b |
| Authors: |
Petrucci, R., Jofré, E., Ferrero, L. V., Cúneo, V., Saker, L., Lovos, F., Gómez, M., Mauas, P. |
| Publication Year: |
2017 |
| Collection: |
Astrophysics |
| Subject Terms: |
Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics |
| More Details: |
We present 12 new transit observations of the exoplanet WASP-46b obtained with the 1.54-m telescope at Estaci\'on Astrof\'isica de Bosque Alegre (EABA, Argentina) and the 0.40-m Horacio Ghielmetti and 2.15-m Jorge Sahade telescopes at Complejo Astron\'omico El Leoncito (CASLEO, Argentina). We analyse them together with 37 light curves from the literature to re-determine the physical parameters and search for additional planets via transit timing variations (TTVs). We consider the 31 transits with uncertainties in their mid-transit times ($e_\mathrm{T_{0}}$) $<$ 1 minute, to perform the first homogeneous study of TTVs for the system, finding a dispersion of $\sigma= 1.66$ minutes over a 6 year baseline. Since no periodic variations are found, our interpretation for this relatively high value of $\sigma$ is that the stellar activity could be affecting the measured mid-transit times. This value of dispersion allows us to rule out the presence of additional bodies with masses larger than 2.3, 4.6, 7, and 9.3 $M_{\mathrm{\bigoplus}}$ at the first-order mean-motion resonances 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, and 5:4 with the transiting planet, respectively. Despite the 6 year baseline and a typical light curve precision of $2 \times 10^{-3}$, we find that we cannot significantly demonstrate a slow decrease of the orbital period of WASP-46b. We place a lower limit of Q$_{\star}$ > $7 \times 10^{3}$ on the tidal quality factor and determine that an additional 6 year baseline is required to rule out Q$_{\star}$ < $10^{5}$.
Comment: Accepted MNRAS, 16 pages, 10 Figures, 8 Tables |
| Document Type: |
Working Paper |
| DOI: |
10.1093/mnras/stx2647 |
| Access URL: |
http://arxiv.org/abs/1710.04707 |
| Accession Number: |
edsarx.1710.04707 |
| Database: |
arXiv |
