scholarly journals The effects of granulation and supergranulation on Earth-mass planet detectability in the habitable zone around F6-K4 stars

2020 ◽  
Vol 642 ◽  
pp. A157 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Meunier ◽  
A.-M. Lagrange

Context. The detectability of exoplanets and the determination of their projected mass in radial velocity are affected by stellar magnetic activity and photospheric dynamics. Among those processes, the effect of granulation, and even more so of supergranulation, has been shown to be significant in the solar case. The impact for other spectral types has not yet been characterised. Aims. Our study is aimed at quantifying the impact of these flows for other stars and estimating how such contributions affect their performance. Methods. We analysed a broad array of extended synthetic time series that model these processes to characterise the impact of these flows on exoplanet detection for main sequence stars with spectral types from F6 to K4. We focussed on Earth-mass planets orbiting within the habitable zone around those stars. We estimated the expected detection rates and detection limits, tested the tools that are typically applied to such observations, and performed blind tests. Results. We find that both granulation and supergranulation on these stars significantly affect planet mass characterisation in radial velocity when performing a follow-up of a transit detection: the uncertainties on these masses are sometimes below 20% for a 1 MEarth (for granulation alone or for low-mass stars), but they are much larger in other configurations (supergranulation, high-mass stars). For granulation and low levels of supergranulation, the detection rates are good for K and late G stars (if the number of points is large enough), but poor for more massive stars. The highest level of supergranulation leads to a very poor performance, even for K stars; this is both due to low detection rates and to high levels of false positives, even for a very dense temporal sampling over 10 yr. False positive levels estimated from standard false alarm probabilities sometimes significantly overestimate or underestimate the true level, depending on the number of points: it is, therefore, crucial to take this effect into account when analysing observations. Conclusions. We conclude that granulation and supergranulation significantly affect the performance of exoplanet detectability. Future works will focus on improving the following three aspects: decreasing the number of false positives, increasing detection rates, and improving the false alarm probability estimations from observations.

2021 ◽  
Vol 503 (4) ◽  
pp. 5223-5231
Author(s):  
C F Zhang ◽  
J W Xu ◽  
Y P Men ◽  
X H Deng ◽  
Heng Xu ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate the impact of correlated noise on fast radio burst (FRB) searching. We found that (1) the correlated noise significantly increases the false alarm probability; (2) the signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) of the false positives become higher; (3) the correlated noise also affects the pulse width distribution of false positives, and there will be more false positives with wider pulse width. We use 55-h observation for M82 galaxy carried out at Nanshan 26m radio telescope to demonstrate the application of the correlated noise modelling. The number of candidates and parameter distribution of the false positives can be reproduced with the modelling of correlated noise. We will also discuss a low S/N candidate detected in the observation, for which we demonstrate the method to evaluate the false alarm probability in the presence of correlated noise. Possible origins of the candidate are discussed, where two possible pictures, an M82-harboured giant pulse and a cosmological FRB, are both compatible with the observation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 644 ◽  
pp. A77
Author(s):  
N. Meunier ◽  
A.-M. Lagrange ◽  
S. Borgniet

Context. Stellar activity strongly affects and may prevent the detection of Earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of solar-type stars with radial velocity technics. Astrometry is in principle less sensitive to stellar activity because the situation is more favourable: the stellar astrometric signal is expected to be fainter than the planetary astrometric signal compared to radial velocities. Aims. We quantify the effect of stellar activity on high-precision astrometry when Earth-mass planets are searched for in the habitable zone around old main-sequence solar-type stars. Methods. We used a very large set of magnetic activity synthetic time series to characterise the properties of the stellar astrometric signal. We then studied the detectability of exoplanets based on different approaches: first based on the theoretical level of false positives derived from the synthetic time series, and then with blind tests for old main-sequence F6-K4 stars. Results. The amplitude of the signal can be up to a few times the solar value depending on the assumptions made for activity level, spectral type, and spot contrast. The detection rates for 1 MEarth planets are very good, however, with extremely low false-positive rates in the habitable zone for stars in the F6-K4 range at 10 pc. The standard false-alarm probability using classical bootstrapping on the time series strongly overestimates the false-positive level. This affects the detection rates. Conclusions. We conclude that if technological challenges can be overcome and very high precision is reached, astrometry is much more suitable for detecting Earth-mass planets in the habitable zone around nearby solar-type stars than radial velocity, and detection rates are much higher for this range of planetary masses and periods when astrometric techniques are used than with radial velocity techniques.


Author(s):  
M C Wyatt ◽  
Q Kral ◽  
C A Sinclair

Abstract This paper considers how planetesimal impacts affect planetary atmospheres. Atmosphere evolution depends on the ratio of gain from volatiles to loss from atmosphere stripping fv; for constant bombardment, atmospheres with fv < 1 are destroyed in finite time, but grow linearly with time for fv > 1. An impact outcome prescription is used to characterise how fv depends on planetesimal impact velocities, size distribution and composition. Planets that are low mass and/or close to the star have atmospheres that deplete in impacts, while high mass and/or distant planets grow secondary atmospheres. Dividing these outcomes is an fv = 1 impact shoreline analogous to Zahnle & Catling’s cosmic shoreline. The impact shoreline’s location depends on assumed impacting planetesimal properties, so conclusions for the atmospheric evolution of a planet like Earth with fv ≈ 1 are only as strong as those assumptions. Application to the exoplanet population shows the gap in the planet radius distribution at ∼1.5R⊕ is coincident with the impact shoreline, which has a similar dependence on orbital period and stellar mass to the observed gap. Given sufficient bombardment, planets below the gap would be expected to lose their atmospheres, while those above could have atmospheres enhanced in volatiles. The level of atmosphere alteration depends on the total bombardment a planet experiences, and so on the system’s (usually unknown) other planets and planetesimals, though massive distant planets would have low accretion efficiency. Habitable zone planets around lower luminosity stars are more susceptible to atmosphere stripping, disfavouring M stars as hosts of life-bearing planets if Earth-like bombardment is conducive to the development of life.


Author(s):  
Jeff Nawrocki ◽  
Katherine Olin ◽  
Martin C Holdrege ◽  
Joel Hartsell ◽  
Lindsay Meyers ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The initial focus of the US public health response to COVID-19 was the implementation of numerous social distancing policies. While COVID-19 was the impetus for imposing these policies, it is not the only respiratory disease affected by their implementation. This study aimed to assess the impact of social distancing policies on non-SARS-CoV-2 respiratory pathogens typically circulating across multiple US states. Methods Linear mixed-effect models were implemented to explore the effects of five social distancing policies on non-SARS-CoV-2 respiratory pathogens across nine states from January 1 through May 1, 2020. The observed 2020 pathogen detection rates were compared week-by-week to historical rates to determine when the detection rates were different. Results Model results indicate that several social distancing policies were associated with a reduction in total detection rate, by nearly 15%. Policies were associated with decreases in pathogen circulation of human rhinovirus/enterovirus and human metapneumovirus, as well as influenza A, which typically decrease after winter. Parainfluenza viruses failed to circulate at historical levels during the spring. Total detection rate in April 2020 was 35% less than historical average. Many of the pathogens driving this difference fell below historical detection rate ranges within two weeks of initial policy implementation. Conclusion This analysis investigated the effect of multiple social distancing policies implemented to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 on non-SARS-CoV-2 respiratory pathogens. These findings suggest that social distancing policies may be used as an impactful public health tool to reduce communicable respiratory illness.


Author(s):  
J. R. Barnes ◽  
C. A. Haswell

AbstractAriel’s ambitious goal to survey a quarter of known exoplanets will transform our knowledge of planetary atmospheres. Masses measured directly with the radial velocity technique are essential for well determined planetary bulk properties. Radial velocity masses will provide important checks of masses derived from atmospheric fits or alternatively can be treated as a fixed input parameter to reduce possible degeneracies in atmospheric retrievals. We quantify the impact of stellar activity on planet mass recovery for the Ariel mission sample using Sun-like spot models scaled for active stars combined with other noise sources. Planets with necessarily well-determined ephemerides will be selected for characterisation with Ariel. With this prior requirement, we simulate the derived planet mass precision as a function of the number of observations for a prospective sample of Ariel targets. We find that quadrature sampling can significantly reduce the time commitment required for follow-up RVs, and is most effective when the planetary RV signature is larger than the RV noise. For a typical radial velocity instrument operating on a 4 m class telescope and achieving 1 m s−1 precision, between ~17% and ~ 37% of the time commitment is spent on the 7% of planets with mass Mp < 10 M⊕. In many low activity cases, the time required is limited by asteroseismic and photon noise. For low mass or faint systems, we can recover masses with the same precision up to ~3 times more quickly with an instrumental precision of ~10 cm s−1.


2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (S276) ◽  
pp. 527-529
Author(s):  
Xavier Dumusque ◽  
Nuno C. Santos ◽  
Stéphane Udry ◽  
Cristophe Lovis ◽  
Xavier Bonfils

AbstractSpectrographs like HARPS can now reach a sub-ms−1 precision in radial-velocity (RV) (Pepe & Lovis 2008). At this level of accuracy, we start to be confronted with stellar noise produced by 3 different physical phenomena: oscillations, granulation phenomena (granulation, meso- and super-granulation) and activity. On solar type stars, these 3 types of perturbation can induce ms−1 RV variation, but on different time scales: 3 to 15 minutes for oscillations, 15 minutes to 1.5 days for granulation phenomena and 10 to 50 days for activity. The high precision observational strategy used on HARPS, 1 measure per night of 15 minutes, on 10 consecutive days each month, is optimized, due to a long exposure time, to average out the noise coming from oscillations (Dumusque et al. 2011a) but not to reduce the noise coming from granulation and activity (Dumusque et al. 2011a and Dumusque et al. 2011b). The smallest planets found with this strategy (Mayor et al. 2009) seems to be at the limit of the actual observational strategy and not at the limit of the instrumental precision. To be able to find Earth mass planets in the habitable zone of solar-type stars (200 days for a K0 dwarf), new observational strategies, averaging out simultaneously all type of stellar noise, are required.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarv Priya ◽  
Tanya Aggarwal ◽  
Caitlin Ward ◽  
Girish Bathla ◽  
Mathews Jacob ◽  
...  

AbstractSide experiments are performed on radiomics models to improve their reproducibility. We measure the impact of myocardial masks, radiomic side experiments and data augmentation for information transfer (DAFIT) approach to differentiate patients with and without pulmonary hypertension (PH) using cardiac MRI (CMRI) derived radiomics. Feature extraction was performed from the left ventricle (LV) and right ventricle (RV) myocardial masks using CMRI in 82 patients (42 PH and 40 controls). Various side study experiments were evaluated: Original data without and with intraclass correlation (ICC) feature-filtering and DAFIT approach (without and with ICC feature-filtering). Multiple machine learning and feature selection strategies were evaluated. Primary analysis included all PH patients with subgroup analysis including PH patients with preserved LVEF (≥ 50%). For both primary and subgroup analysis, DAFIT approach without feature-filtering was the highest performer (AUC 0.957–0.958). ICC approaches showed poor performance compared to DAFIT approach. The performance of combined LV and RV masks was superior to individual masks alone. There was variation in top performing models across all approaches (AUC 0.862–0.958). DAFIT approach with features from combined LV and RV masks provide superior performance with poor performance of feature filtering approaches. Model performance varies based upon the feature selection and model combination.


2020 ◽  
Vol 501 (1) ◽  
pp. 701-712
Author(s):  
N Yonemaru ◽  
S Kuroyanagi ◽  
G Hobbs ◽  
K Takahashi ◽  
X-J Zhu ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Cosmic strings are potential gravitational-wave (GW) sources that can be probed by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). In this work we develop a detection algorithm for a GW burst from a cusp on a cosmic string, and apply it to Parkes PTA data. We find four events with a false alarm probability less than 1 per cent. However further investigation shows that all of these are likely to be spurious. As there are no convincing detections we place upper limits on the GW amplitude for different event durations. From these bounds we place limits on the cosmic string tension of Gμ ∼ 10−5, and highlight that this bound is independent from those obtained using other techniques. We discuss the physical implications of our results and the prospect of probing cosmic strings in the era of Square Kilometre Array.


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (S282) ◽  
pp. 33-40
Author(s):  
L. Eyer ◽  
P. Dubath ◽  
N. Mowlavi ◽  
P. North ◽  
A. Triaud ◽  
...  

AbstractTwo upcoming large scale surveys, the ESA Gaia and LSST projects, will bring a new era in astronomy. The number of binary systems that will be observed and detected by these projects is enormous, estimations range from millions for Gaia to several tens of millions for LSST. We review some tools that should be developed and also what can be gained from these missions on the subject of binaries and exoplanets from the astrometry, photometry, radial velocity and their alert systems.


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