Fast Inversion Method for Determination of Planetary Parameters from Transit Timing Variations

Abstract

The Transit Timing Variation (TTV) method relies on monitoring changes in timing of transits of known exoplanets. Non-transiting planets in the system can be inferred from TTVs by their gravitational interaction with the transiting planet. The TTV method is sensitive to low-mass planets that cannot be detected by other means. Here we describe a fast algorithm that can be used to determine the mass and orbit of the non-transiting planets from the TTV data. We apply our code, ttvim.f, to a wide variety of planetary systems to test the uniqueness of the TTV inversion problem and its dependence on the precision of TTV observations. We find that planetary parameters, including the mass and mutual orbital inclination of planets, can be determined from the TTV datasets that should become available in near future. Unlike the radial velocity technique, the TTV method can therefore be used to characterize the inclination distribution of multi-planet systems.

References in corpus (5)

• DHP Framework: Digital Health Passports Using Blockchain -- Use case on international tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Using long-term transit timing to detect terrestrial planets
• A limit on the presence of Earth-mass planets around a Sun-like star
• Predicting the Yields of Photometric Surveys for Transiting Extrasolar Planets
• MOST Spacebased Photometry of the Transiting Exoplanet System HD 209458: Transit Timing to Search for Additional Planets

Cited by in corpus (30)

• The climate of HD 189733b from fourteen transits and eclipses measured by Spitzer
• The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK): I. Description of a New Observational Project
• The Detection and Characterization of a Nontransiting Planet by Transit Timing Variations
• KOI-142, the King of Transit Variations, is a Pair of Planets near the 2:1 Resonance
• TTVFast: An efficient and accurate code for transit timing inversion problems
• The HAT-P-13 Exoplanetary System: Evidence for Spin-Orbit Alignment and a Third Companion
• Observation of the full 12-hour-long transit of the exoplanet HD80606b. Warm-Spitzer photometry and SOPHIE spectroscopy
• Measurement of planet masses with transit timing variations due to synodic "chopping" effects
• Transit timing variation in exoplanet WASP-3b
• An Independent Analysis of Kepler-4b through Kepler-8b
• Transit timing to first order in eccentricity
• Transit timing variations in eccentric hierarchical triple exoplanetary systems. I. Perturbations on the time-scale of the orbital period of the perturber
• Kepler-411: a four-planet system with an active host star
• Photo-dynamical mass determination of the multi-planetary system K2-19
• The Effect of Conjunctions on the Transit Timing Variations of Exoplanets
• Systemic: A Testbed for Characterizing the Detection of Extrasolar Planets. II. Numerical approaches to the Transit Timing Inverse Problem
• Predicting a third planet in the Kepler-47 circumbinary system
• Detection of Earth-mass and Super-Earth Trojan Planets Using Transit Timing Variation Method
• On the Detection of (Habitable) Super-Earths Around Low-Mass Stars Using Kepler and Transit Timing Variation Method
• Quantifying the challenges of detecting unseen planetary companions with transit timing variations
• Transit timing variations for planets near eccentricity-type mean motion resonances
• Ground-based multisite observations of two transits of HD 80606b
• Super-Earths: A New Class of Planetary Bodies
• Photo-Dynamical Analysis of Three Kepler Objects of Interest with Significant Transit Timing Variations
• A differentiable N-body code for transit timing and dynamical modeling. I. Algorithm and derivatives
• Transit-timing measurements with the model-independent barycenter method: Application to the LHS 6343 system
• An Accurate 3D Analytic Model for Exoplanetary Photometry, Radial Velocity, and Astrometry
• An alternative stable solution for the Kepler-419 system, obtained with the use of a genetic algorithm
• On the Detection of Habitable Trojan Planets in the Kepler Circumbinary Systems
• Nauyaca: a new tool to determine planetary masses and orbital elements through transit timing analysis