2016/04/11 by Andrew Vanderburg, Peter Plavchan, John Asher Johnson +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astro and Planetary Science #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Circumstellar habitable zone #Exoplanet #Orbital period #Physics #Planet #Planetary habitability #Radial velocity #Rotation period #Stars #Stellar rotation #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.EP #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stw863
10 pages, 6 figures. Accepted by MNRAS
arxiv created 2016/04/11 · openalex publication_date 2016/04/14 · arxiv updated 2016/04/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Future generations of precise radial velocity (RV) surveys aim to achieve sensitivity sufficient to detect Earth mass planets orbiting in their stars’ habitable zones. A major obstacle to this goal is astrophysical RV noise caused by active areas moving across the stellar limb as a star rotates. In this paper, we quantify how stellar activity impacts exoplanet detection with radial velocities as a function of orbital and stellar rotational periods. We perform data-driven simulations of how stellar rotation affects planet detectability and compile and present relations for the typical time-scale and amplitude of stellar RV noise as a function of stellar mass. We show that the characteristic time-scales of quasi-periodic RV jitter from stellar rotational modulations coincides with the orbital period of habitable-zone exoplanets around early M-dwarfs. These coincident periods underscore the importance of monitoring the targets of RV habitable-zone planet surveys through simultaneous photometric measurements for determining rotation periods and activity signals, and mitigating activity signals using spectroscopic indicators and/or RV measurements at different wavelengths.