Improving exoplanet detection power: multivariate Gaussian process models for stellar activity

DOI10.1214/21-AOAS1471zbMATH Open1502.62108arXiv1711.01318WikidataQ114060493 ScholiaQ114060493MaRDI QIDQ2154169FDOQ2154169

Authors: David E. Jones, David C. Stenning, Eric B. Ford, Robert L. Wolpert, Thomas Loredo, Christian Gilbertson, Xavier Dumusque 

Publication date: 14 July 2022

Published in: The Annals of Applied Statistics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The radial velocity method is one of the most successful techniques for detecting exoplanets. It works by detecting the velocity of a host star induced by the gravitational effect of an orbiting planet, specifically the velocity along our line of sight, which is called the radial velocity of the star. Low-mass planets typically cause their host star to move with radial velocities of 1 m/s or less. By analyzing a time series of stellar spectra from a host star, modern astronomical instruments can in theory detect such planets. However, in practice, intrinsic stellar variability (e.g., star spots, convective motion, pulsations) affects the spectra and often mimics a radial velocity signal. This signal contamination makes it difficult to reliably detect low-mass planets. A principled approach to recovering planet radial velocity signals in the presence of stellar activity was proposed by Rajpaul et al. (2015). It uses a multivariate Gaussian process model to jointly capture time series of the apparent radial velocity and multiple indicators of stellar activity. We build on this work in two ways: (i) we propose using dimension reduction techniques to construct new high-information stellar activity indicators; and (ii) we extend the Rajpaul et al. (2015) model to a larger class of models and use a power-based model comparison procedure to select the best model. Despite significant interest in exoplanets, previous efforts have not performed large-scale stellar activity model selection or attempted to evaluate models based on planet detection power. In the case of main sequence G2V stars, we find that our method substantially improves planet detection power compared to previous state-of-the-art approaches.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01318

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zbMATH Keywords

model selectiondimension reductiontime seriesGaussian processexoplanetsradial velocity methodstellar activity

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Applications of statistics to physics (62P35) Statistical astronomy (85A35)

Cites Work

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Cited In (6)

• Bayesian methods for analysis and adaptive scheduling of exoplanet observations
• Extracting Keplerian signals from noisy data
• On the detection of (habitable) super-Earths around low-mass stars using \textit{Kepler} and transit timing variation method
• A Hermite-Gaussian based exoplanet radial velocity estimation method
• Mapping interstellar dust with Gaussian processes
• Quantifying the information impact of future searches for exoplanetary biosignatures

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