English

Transit Timing Variations for AU Microscopii b & c

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2022-07-06 v2

Abstract

We explore the transit timing variations (TTVs) of the young (22 Myr) nearby AU Mic planetary system. For AU Mic b, we introduce three Spitzer (4.5 μ\mum) transits, five TESS transits, 11 LCO transits, one PEST transit, one Brierfield transit, and two transit timing measurements from Rossiter-McLaughlin observations; for AU Mic c, we introduce three TESS transits. We present two independent TTV analyses. First, we use EXOFASTv2 to jointly model the Spitzer and ground-based transits and to obtain the midpoint transit times. We then construct an O--C diagram and model the TTVs with Exo-Striker. Second, we reproduce our results with an independent photodynamical analysis. We recover a TTV mass for AU Mic c of 10.82.2+2.3^{+2.3}_{-2.2} ME_{E}. We compare the TTV-derived constraints to a recent radial-velocity (RV) mass determination. We also observe excess TTVs that do not appear to be consistent with the dynamical interactions of b and c alone, and do not appear to be due to spots or flares. Thus, we present a hypothetical non-transiting "middle-d" candidate exoplanet that is consistent with the observed TTVs, the candidate RV signal, and would establish the AU Mic system as a compact resonant multi-planet chain in a 4:6:9 period commensurability. These results demonstrate that the AU Mic planetary system is dynamically interacting producing detectable TTVs, and the implied orbital dynamics may inform the formation mechanisms for this young system. We recommend future RV and TTV observations of AU Mic b and c to further constrain the masses and to confirm the existence of possible additional planet(s).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2202.05813,
  title  = {Transit Timing Variations for AU Microscopii b & c},
  author = {Justin M. Wittrock and Stefan Dreizler and Michael A. Reefe and Brett M. Morris and Peter P. Plavchan and Patrick J. Lowrance and Brice-Olivier Demory and James G. Ingalls and Emily A. Gilbert and Thomas Barclay and Bryson L. Cale and Karen A. Collins and Kevin I. Collins and Ian J. M. Crossfield and Diana Dragomir and Jason D. Eastman and Mohammed El Mufti and Dax Feliz and Jonathan Gagne and Eric Gaidos and Peter Gao and Claire S. Geneser and Leslie Hebb and Christopher E. Henze and Keith D. Horne and Jon M. Jenkins and Eric L. N. Jensen and Stephen R. Kane and Laurel Kaye and Eder Martioli and Teresa A. Monsue and Enric Palle and Elisa V. Quintana and Don J. Radford and Veronica Roccatagliata and Joshua E. Schlieder and Richard P. Schwarz and Avi Shporer and Keivan G. Stassun and Christopher Stockdale and Thiam-Guan Tan and Angelle M. Tanner and Andrew Vanderburg and Laura D. Vega and Songhu Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.05813},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Corrected typos; revised Section 3, 4, and 5 to reflect reanalysis, results unchanged. Submitted to AAS Journals Nov 11th, 2020; favorable referee report received Jan 3rd; final draft accepted for publication in the AJ Apr 19th

R2 v1 2026-06-24T09:32:37.077Z