AU Mic b is the Youngest Planet to have a Spin-Orbit Alignment Measurement


Abstract in English

We report measurements of the sky-projected spin-orbit angle for AU,Mic,b, a Neptune-size planet orbiting a very young ($sim20$,Myr) nearby pre-main sequence M dwarf star which also hosts a bright, edge-on, debris disk. The planet was recently discovered from preliminary analysis of radial velocity observations and confirmed to be transiting its host star from photometric data from the NASAs textit{TESS} mission. We obtained radial velocity measurements of AU,Mic over the course of two partially observable transits and one full transit of planet b from high-resolution spectroscopic observations made with the {textsc{Minerva}}-Australis telescope array. Only a marginal detection of the Rossiter--McLaughlin effect signal was obtained from the radial velocities, in part due to AU Mic being an extremely active star and the lack of full transit coverage plus sufficient out-of-transit baseline. As such, a precise determination of the obliquity for AU,Mic,b is not possible in this study and we find a sky-projected spin-orbit angle of $lambda = 47{^{+26}_{-54}}^{circ}$. This result is consistent with both the planets orbit being aligned or highly misaligned with the spin-axis of its host star. Our measurement independently agrees with, but is far less precise than observations carried out on other instruments around the same time that measure a low obliquity orbit for the planet. AU,Mic is the youngest exoplanetary system for which the projected spin-orbit angle has been measured, making it a key data point in the study of the formation and migration of exoplanets -- particularly given that the system is also host to a bright debris disk.

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