The exoplanet eccentricity distribution from Kepler planet candidates
Abstract
The eccentricity distribution of exoplanets is known from radial velocity surveys to be divergent from circular orbits beyond 0.1 au. This is particularly the case for large planets where the radial velocity technique is most sensitive. The eccentricity of planetary orbits can have a large effect on the transit probability and subsequently the planet yield of transit surveys. The Kepler mission is the first transit survey that probes deep enough into period space to allow this effect to be seen via the variation in transit durations. We use the Kepler planet candidates to show that the eccentricity distribution is consistent with that found from radial velocity surveys to a high degree of confidence. We further show that the mean eccentricity of the Kepler candidates decreases with decreasing planet size indicating that smaller planets are preferentially found in low-eccentricity orbits.
Additional Information
© 2012 The Authors. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2012 RAS. Accepted 2012 June 28. Received 2012 June 28; in original form 2012 May 29. The authors would like to thank Rory Barnes, Eric Ford, Andrew Howard and Suvrath Mahadevan for several useful discussions. They would also like to thank the anonymous referee, whose comments greatly improved the quality of the paper. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Orbit Database and EDE at exoplanets.org. This research has also made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.Attached Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 34518
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20120927-133136839
- NASA/Caltech
- Created
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2012-09-28Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-10-19Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)