Investigating the potential of the Pan-Planets project using Monte Carlo simulations

Abstract

Using Monte Carlo simulations we analyze the potential of the upcoming transit survey Pan-Planets. The analysis covers the simulation of realistic light curves (including the effects of ingress/egress and limb-darkening) with both correlated and uncorrelated noise as well as the application of a box-fitting-least-squares detection algorithm. In this work we show how simulations can be a powerful tool in defining and optimizing the survey strategy of a transiting planet survey. We find the Pan-Planets project to be competitive with all other existing and planned transit surveys with the main power being the large 7 square degree field of view. In the first year we expect to find up to 25 Jupiter-sized planets with periods below 5 days around stars brighter than V = 16.5 mag. The survey will also be sensitive to planets with longer periods and planets with smaller radii. After the second year of the survey, we expect to find up to 9 Warm Jupiters with periods between 5 and 9 days and 7 Very Hot Saturns around stars brighter than V = 16.5 mag as well as 9 Very Hot Neptunes with periods from 1 to 3 days around stars brighter than i' = 18.0 mag.

11 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Pan-STARRS and PESSTO search for an optical counterpart to the LIGO gravitational wave source GW150914
• Discovery and characterisation of detached M-dwarf eclipsing binaries in the WFCAM Transit Survey
• Pan-Planets: Searching for hot Jupiters around cool dwarfs
• A sensitivity analysis of the WFCAM Transit Survey for short-period giant planets around M dwarfs
• A hot Jupiter transiting a mid-K dwarf found in the pre-OmegaCam Transit Survey
• Following the TraCS of exoplanets with Pan-Planets: Wendelstein-1b and Wendelstein-2b