English

Prospects for TTV Detection and Dynamical Constraints with TESS

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2019-10-02 v2

Abstract

We consider the potential for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to detect transit timing variations (TTVs) during both its nominal and extended mission phases. Building on previous estimates of the overall yield of planetary systems from the TESS mission, we predict that during its nominal two-year mission, TESS will observe measurable TTVs in 30\sim30 systems, from which O(10)\mathcal{O}(10) planet will get precise mass measurements from TTVs alone, 5\sim 5 planets will have significant constraints placed on their masses from TTVs, and over a dozen systems will be singly-transiting TTV systems. We consider a number of different extended mission scenarios, and predict that in a typical scenario, an extended mission will allow TESS to increase the number of systems with measurable TTVs to a total of 90\sim90, from which 15\sim 15 planets will have precise mass measurements, another 15\sim 15 will have significant constraints placed on their masses, and 60\sim60 will be singly-transiting TTV systems. We also describe how follow-up transit observations of multi-planet systems discovered by the TESS mission can be optimally planned to maximize TTV mass and eccentricity constraints.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1811.01970,
  title  = {Prospects for TTV Detection and Dynamical Constraints with TESS},
  author = {Sam Hadden and Thomas Barclay and Matthew J. Payne and Matthew J. Holman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.01970},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

Revised in response to referee report; includes updated TTV yield projections; accepted to AJ; code available at github.com/shadden/TTV2Fast2Furious

R2 v1 2026-06-23T05:05:02.994Z