High Order Harmonics in Light Curves of Kepler Planets

Abstract

The Kepler mission was launched in 2009 and has discovered thousands of planet candidates. In a recent paper, Esteves et al. (2013) found a periodic signal in the light curves of KOI-13 and HAT-P-7, with a frequency triple the orbital frequency of a transiting planet. We found similar harmonics in many systems with a high occurrence rate. At this time, the origins of the signal are not entirely certain. We look carefully at the possibility of errors being introduced through our data processing routines but conclude that the signal is real. The harmonics on multiples of the orbital frequency are a result of non-sinusoidal periodic signals. We speculate on their origin and generally caution that these harmonics could lead to wrong estimates of planet albedos, beaming mass estimates, and ellipsoidal variations.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters, 6 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• Optical Phase Curves of Kepler Exoplanets
• Atmospheric Characterization of the Hot Jupiter Kepler-13Ab
• Characterizing the Cool KOIs. V. KOI-256: A Mutually Eclipsing Post-Common Envelope Binary

Cited by in corpus (4)

• The Telltale Heartbeat: Detection and Characterization of Eccentric Orbiting Planets via Tides on their Host Star
• Higher Order Harmonics in the Light Curves of Eccentric Planetary Systems
• Is binning always sinning? The impact of time-averaging for exoplanet phase curves
• Revisiting Kepler Transiting Systems: Unvetting Planets and Constraining Relationships among Harmonics in Phase Curves