MARVELS-1b: A Short-Period, Brown Dwarf Desert Candidate from the SDSS-III MARVELS Planet Search
Abstract
We present a new short-period brown dwarf candidate around the star TYC 1240-00945-1. This candidate was discovered in the first year of the Multi-object APO Radial Velocity Exoplanets Large-area Survey (MARVELS), which is part of the third phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), and we designate the brown dwarf as MARVELS-1b. MARVELS uses the technique of dispersed fixed-delay interferometery to simultaneously obtain radial velocity measurements for 60 objects per field using a single, custom-built instrument that is fiber fed from the SDSS 2.5-m telescope. From our 20 radial velocity measurements spread over a ~370 d time baseline, we derive a Keplerian orbital fit with semi-amplitude K=2.533+/-0.025 km/s, period P=5.8953+/-0.0004 d, and eccentricity consistent with circular. Independent follow-up radial velocity data confirm the orbit. Adopting a mass of 1.37+/-0.11 M_Sun for the slightly evolved F9 host star, we infer that the companion has a minimum mass of 28.0+/-1.5 M_Jup, a semimajor axis 0.071+/-0.002 AU assuming an edge-on orbit, and is probably tidally synchronized. We find no evidence for coherent instrinsic variability of the host star at the period of the companion at levels greater than a few millimagnitudes. The companion has an a priori transit probability of ~14%. Although we find no evidence for transits, we cannot definitively rule them out for companion radii ~<1 R_Jup.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1011.5170,
title = {MARVELS-1b: A Short-Period, Brown Dwarf Desert Candidate from the SDSS-III MARVELS Planet Search},
author = {Brian L. Lee and Jian Ge and Scott W. Fleming and Keivan G. Stassun and B. Scott Gaudi and Rory Barnes and Suvrath Mahadevan and Jason D. Eastman and Jason Wright and Robert J. Siverd and Bruce Gary and Luan Ghezzi and Chris Laws and John P. Wisniewski and G. F. Porto de Mello and Ricardo L. C. Ogando and Marcio A. G. Maia and Luiz Nicolaci da Costa and Thirupathi Sivarani and Joshua Pepper and Duy Cuong Nguyen and Leslie Hebb and Nathan De Lee and Ji Wang and Xiaoke Wan and Bo Zhao and Liang Chang and John Groot and Frank Varosi and Fred Hearty and Kevin Hanna and J. C. van Eyken and Stephen R. Kane and Eric Agol and Dmitry Bizyaev and John J. Bochanski and Howard Brewington and Zhiping Chen and Erin Costello and Liming Dou and Daniel J. Eisenstein and Adam Fletcher and Eric B. Ford and Pengcheng Guo and Jon A. Holtzman and Peng Jiang and R. French Leger and Jian Liu and Daniel C. Long and Elena Malanushenko and Viktor Malanushenko and Mohit Malik and Daniel Oravetz and Kaike Pan and Pais Rohan and Donald P. Schneider and Alaina Shelden and Stephanie A. Snedden and Audrey Simmons and B. A. Weaver and David H. Weinberg and Ji-Wei Xie},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1011.5170},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
47 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ