dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaExoplanet transit search at the detection limit: detection and false alarm vetting pipeline
| Authors | Jakob Robnik, Uroš Seljak, Jon M. Jenkins, Steve Bryson |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | 2601.07465vv1 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07465 |
| License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Abstract
One of the primary mission goals of the Kepler space telescope was to detect Earth-like terrestrial planets in the habitable zone around Sun-like stars. These planets are at the detection limit, where the Kepler detection and vetting pipeline produced unreliable planet candidates. We present a novel pipeline that improves the removal of localized defects prior to the planet search, improves vetting at the level of individual transits and introduces a Bayes factor test statistic and an algorithm for extracting multiple candidates from a single detection run. We show with injections in the Kepler data that the introduced novelties improve pipeline's completeness at a fixed false alarm rate. We apply the pipeline to the stars with previously identified planet candidates and show that our pipeline successfully recovers the previously confirmed candidates, but flags a considerable portion of unconfirmed candidates as likely false alarms, especially in the long period, low signal-to-noise ratio regime. In particular, several known Earth-like candidates in the habitable zone, such as KOI 8063.01, 8107.01 and 8242.01, are identified as false alarms, which could have a significant impact on the estimates of $\eta_{\oplus}$, i.e., the occurrence of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone.
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"abstract": "One of the primary mission goals of the Kepler space telescope was to detect Earth-like terrestrial planets in the habitable zone around Sun-like stars. These planets are at the detection limit, where the Kepler detection and vetting pipeline produced unreliable planet candidates. We present a novel pipeline that improves the removal of localized defects prior to the planet search, improves vetting at the level of individual transits and introduces a Bayes factor test statistic and an algorithm for extracting multiple candidates from a single detection run. We show with injections in the Kepler data that the introduced novelties improve pipeline\u0027s completeness at a fixed false alarm rate. We apply the pipeline to the stars with previously identified planet candidates and show that our pipeline successfully recovers the previously confirmed candidates, but flags a considerable portion of unconfirmed candidates as likely false alarms, especially in the long period, low signal-to-noise ratio regime. In particular, several known Earth-like candidates in the habitable zone, such as KOI 8063.01, 8107.01 and 8242.01, are identified as false alarms, which could have a significant impact on the estimates of $\\eta_{\\oplus}$, i.e., the occurrence of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone.",
"arxiv_id": "2601.07465",
"authors": [
"Jakob Robnik",
"Uro\u0161 Seljak",
"Jon M. Jenkins",
"Steve Bryson"
],
"categories": [
"astro-ph.EP"
],
"license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"title": "Exoplanet transit search at the detection limit: detection and false alarm vetting pipeline",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07465",
"version": "v1"
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