No Arabic abstract
The aim of the project is to improve our knowledge on the multiplicity of planet-host stars at wide physical separations. We cross-matched approximately 6200 square degree area of the Southern sky imaged by the Visible Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) Hemisphere Survey (VHS) with the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) to look for wide common proper motion companions to known planet-host stars. We complemented our astrometric search with photometric criteria. We confirmed spectroscopically the co-moving nature of seven sources out of 16 companion candidates and discarded eight, while the remaining one stays as a candidate. Among these new wide companions to planet-host stars, we discovered a T4.5 dwarf companion at 6.3 arcmin (~9000 au) from HIP70849, a K7V star which hosts a 9 Jupiter mass planet with an eccentric orbit. We also report two new stellar M dwarf companions to one G and one metal-rich K star. We infer stellar and substellar binary frequencies for our complete sample of 37 targets of 5.4+/-3.8% and 2.7+/-2.7% (1 sigma confidence level), respectively, for projected physical separations larger than ~60-160 au assuming the range of distances of planet-host stars (24-75 pc). These values are comparable to the frequencies of non planet-host stars. We find that the period-eccentricity trend holds with a lack of multiple systems with planets at large eccentricities (e > 0.2) for periods less than 40 days. However, the lack of planets more massive than 2.5 Jupiter masses and short periods (<40 days) orbiting single stars is not so obvious due to recent discoveries by ground-based transit surveys and space missions.
We present the discovery of a substellar companion to the primary host lens in the microlensing event MOA-2012-BLG-006. The companion-to-host mass ratio is 0.016, corresponding to a companion mass of $approx8~M_{rm Jup} (M_*/0.5M_odot)$. Thus, the companion is either a high-mass giant planet or a low-mass brown dwarf, depending on the mass of the primary $M_*$. The companion signal was separated from the peak of the primary event by a time that was as much as four times longer than the event timescale. We therefore infer a relatively large projected separation of the companion from its host of $approx10~{rm a.u.}(M_*/0.5M_odot)^{1/2}$ for a wide range (3-7 kpc) of host star distances from the Earth. We also challenge a previous claim of a planetary companion to the lens star in microlensing event OGLE-2002-BLG-045.
We analyze KMT-2019-BLG-1339, a microlensing event with an obvious but incompletely resolved brief anomaly feature around the peak of the light curve. Although the origin of the anomaly is identified to be a companion to the lens with a low mass ratio $q$, the interpretation is subject to two different degeneracy types. The first type is the ambiguity in $rho$, representing the angular source radius scaled to the angular radius of the Einstein ring, $theta_{rm E}$, and the other is the $sleftrightarrow s^{-1}$ degeneracy. The former type, `finite-source degeneracy, causes ambiguities in both $s$ and $q$, while the latter induces an ambiguity only in $s$. Here $s$ denotes the separation (in units of $theta_{rm E}$) in projection between the lens components. We estimate that the lens components have masses $(M_1, M_2)sim (0.27^{+0.36}_{-0.15}~M_odot, 11^{+16}_{-7}~M_{rm J})$ and $sim (0.48^{+0.40}_{-0.28}~M_odot, 1.3^{+1.1}_{-0.7}~M_{rm J})$ according to the two solutions subject to the finite-source degeneracy, indicating that the lens comprises an M dwarf and a companion with a mass around the planet/brown dwarf boundary or a Jovian-mass planet. It is possible to lift the finite-source degeneracy by conducting future observations utilizing a high resolution instrument because the relative lens-source proper motion predicted by the solutions are widely different.
Directly imaged planets are self-luminous companions of pre-main sequence and young main sequence stars. They reside in wider orbits ($sim10mathrm{s}-1000mathrm{s}$~AU) and generally are more massive compared to the close-in ($lesssim 10$~AU) planets. Determining the host star properties of these outstretched planetary systems is important to understand and discern various planet formation and evolution scenarios. We present the stellar parameters and metallicity ([Fe/H]) for a subsample of 18 stars known to host planets discovered by the direct imaging technique. We retrieved the high-resolution spectra for these stars from public archives and used the synthetic spectral fitting technique and Bayesian analysis to determine the stellar properties in a uniform and consistent way. For eight sources, the metallicities are reported for the first time, while the results are consistent with the previous estimates for the other sources. Our analysis shows that metallicities of stars hosting directly imaged planets are close to solar with a mean [Fe/H] = $-0.04pm0.27$~dex. The large scatter in metallicity suggests that a metal-rich environment may not be necessary to form massive planets at large orbital distances. We also find that the planet mass-host star metallicity relation for the directly imaged massive planets in wide-orbits is very similar to that found for the well studied population of short period ($lesssim 1$~yr) super-Jupiters and brown-dwarfs around main-sequence stars.
We present an analysis of the anomalous microlensing event, MOA-2010-BLG-073, announced by the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics survey on 2010-03-18. This event was remarkable because the source was previously known to be photometrically variable. Analyzing the pre-event source lightcurve, we demonstrate that it is an irregular variable over time scales >200d. Its dereddened color, $(V-I)_{S,0}$, is 1.221$pm$0.051mag and from our lens model we derive a source radius of 14.7$pm$1.3 $R_{odot}$, suggesting that it is a red giant star. We initially explored a number of purely microlensing models for the event but found a residual gradient in the data taken prior to and after the event. This is likely to be due to the variability of the source rather than part of the lensing event, so we incorporated a slope parameter in our model in order to derive the true parameters of the lensing system. We find that the lensing system has a mass ratio of q=0.0654$pm$0.0006. The Einstein crossing time of the event, $T_{rm{E}}=44.3$pm$0.1d, was sufficiently long that the lightcurve exhibited parallax effects. In addition, the source trajectory relative to the large caustic structure allowed the orbital motion of the lens system to be detected. Combining the parallax with the Einstein radius, we were able to derive the distance to the lens, $D_L$=2.8$pm$0.4kpc, and the masses of the lensing objects. The primary of the lens is an M-dwarf with $M_{L,p}$=0.16$pm0.03M_{odot}$ while the companion has $M_{L,s}$=11.0$pm2.0M_{rm{J}}$ putting it in the boundary zone between planets and brown dwarfs.
The positive correlation between planet detection rate and host star iron abundance lends strong support to the core accretion theory of planet formation. However, iron is not the most significant mass contributor to the cores of giant planets. Since giant planet cores are thought to grow from silicate grains with icy mantles, the likelihood of gas giant formation should depend heavily on the oxygen and silicon abundance of the planet formation environment. Here we compare the silicon and oxygen abundances of a set of 76 planet hosts and a control sample of 80 metal-rich stars without any known giant planets. Our new, independent analysis was conducted using high resolution, high signal-to-noise data obtained at McDonald Observatory. Because we do not wish to simply reproduce the known planet-metallicity correlation, we have devised a statistical method for matching the underlying [Fe/H] distributions of our two sets of stars. We find a 99% probability that planet detection rate depends on the silicon abundance of the host star, over and above the observed planet-metallicity correlation. We do not detect any such correlation for oxygen. Our results would thus seem to suggest that grain nucleation, rather than subsequent icy mantle growth, is the important limiting factor in forming giant planets via core accretion. Based on our results and interpretation, we predict that planet detection should correlate with host star abundance for refractory elements responsible for grain nucleation and that no such trends should exist for the most abundant volatile elements responsible for icy mantle growth.