Search

Context. Revealing the mechanisms shaping the architecture of planetary systems is crucial for our understanding of their formation and evolution. In this context, it has been recently proposed that stellar clustering might be the key in shaping the orbital architecture of exoplanets. Aims. The main goal of this work is to explore the factors that shape the orbits of planets. Methods. We performed different statistical tests to compare the properties of planets and their host stars associated with different stellar environments. Results. We used a homogeneous sample of relatively young FGK dwarf stars with radial velocity detected planets and tested the hypothesis that their association to phase space (position-velocity) over-densities (“cluster” stars) and under-densities (“field” stars) impacts the orbital periods of planets. When controlling for the host star properties on a sample of 52 planets orbiting around cluster stars and 15 planets orbiting around field stars, we found no significant difference in the period distribution of planets orbiting these two populations of stars. By considering an extended sample of 73 planets orbiting around cluster stars and 25 planets orbiting field stars, a significant difference in the planetary period distributions emerged. However, the hosts associated with stellar under-densities appeared to be significantly older than their cluster counterparts. This does not allow us to conclude as to whether the planetary architecture is related to age, environment, or both. We further studied a sample of planets orbiting cluster stars to study the mechanism responsible for the shaping of orbits of planets in similar environments. We could not identify a parameter that can unambiguously be responsible for the orbital architecture of massive planets, perhaps, indicating the complexity of the issue. Conclusions. An increased number of planets in clusters and in over-density environments will help to build large and unbiased samples which will then allow to better understand the dominant processes shaping the orbits of planets.

Aims.The aim of this work is to search for planets around intermediate-mass stars in open clusters using data from an extensive survey with more than 15 yr of observations.Methods.We obtain high-precision radial velocities (RV) with the HARPS spectrograph for a sample of 142 giant stars in 17 open clusters. We fit Keplerian orbits when a significant periodic signal is detected. We also study the variation of stellar activity indicators and line-profile variations to discard stellar-induced signals.Results.We present the discovery of a periodic RV signal compatible with the presence of a planet candidate in the 1.15 Gyr open cluster IC 4651 orbiting the 2.06M⊙star No. 9122. If confirmed, the planet candidate would have a minimum mass of 7.2MJand a period of 747 days. However, we also find that the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the cross-correlation function (CCF) varies with a period close to the RV, casting doubts on the planetary nature of the signal. We also provide refined parameters for the previously discovered planet around NGC 2423 No. 3, but show evidence that the bisector inverse slope (BIS) of the CCF is correlated with the RV during some of the observing periods. We consider this fact as a warning that this might not be a real planet and that the RV variations could be caused by stellar activity and/or pulsations. Finally, we show that the previously reported signal by a brown dwarf around NGC 4349 No. 127 is presumably produced by stellar activity modulation.Conclusions.The long-term monitoring of several red giants in open clusters has allowed us to find periodic RV variations in several stars. However, we also show that the follow-up of this kind of stars should last more than one orbital period to detect long-term signals of stellar origin. This work highlights the fact that although it is possible to detect planets around red giants, large-amplitude, long-period RV modulations do exist in such stars that can mimic the presence of an orbiting planetary body. Therefore, we need to better understand how such RV modulations behave as stars evolve along the red giant branch and perform a detailed study of all the possible stellar-induced signals (e.g., spots, pulsations, granulation) to comprehend the origin of RV variations.

We describe three useful applications of asteroseismology in the context of exoplanet science: (1) the detailed characterisation of exoplanet host stars; (2) the measurement of stellar inclinations; and (3) the determination of orbital eccentricity from transit duration making use of asteroseismic stellar densities. We do so using the example system Kepler-410 (Van Eylen et al. 2014). This is one of the brightest (V = 9.4) Kepler exoplanet host stars, containing a small (2.8 Rearth) transiting planet in a long orbit (17.8 days), and one or more additional non-transiting planets as indicated by transit timing variations. The validation of Kepler-410 (KOI-42) was complicated due to the presence of a companion star, and the planetary nature of the system was confirmed after analyzing a Spitzer transit observation as well as ground-based follow-up observations., Comment: 4 pages, Proceedings of the CoRoT Symposium 3 / Kepler KASC-7 joint meeting, Toulouse, 7-11 July 2014. To be published by EPJ Web of Conferences

International audience; The detection and analysis of oscillations in binary star systems is critical in understanding stellar structure and evolution. This is because such systems have the same initial chemical composition and age. Solar-like" oscillations have been detected in both components of the asteroseismic binary HD 176465 by Kepler. This study presents an independent modelling of the two stars in this binary system. Stellar models generated using MESA (Modules for Experiment in Stellar Astrophysics) were fitted to both the observed individual frequencies and some spectroscopic parameters. The individual theoretical oscillation frequencies for the corresponding stellar models were obtained using GYRE as the pulsation code. A Bayesian approach was applied to find the Probability Distribution Functions of the stellar parameters using AIMS (Asteroseismic Inference on Massive Scale) as the optimization code. The ages of HD 176465 A and HD 176465 B were found to be 2.81 +/- 0.48 Gyrs and 2.52 +/- 0.80 Gyrs respectively. These results are in agreement when compared to previous studies carried out using other asteroseismic modelling techniques and gyrochronology.

International audience

The increasing interest in understanding stellar magnetic activity cycles is a strong motivation for the development of parameterized starspot models which can be constrained observationally. In this work we develop an empirical tool for the stochastic reconstruction of sunspot cycles, using the average solar properties as a reference. The synthetic sunspot cycle is compared with the sunspot data extracted from the National Geophysical Data Center, in particular using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. This tool yields synthetic spot group records, including date, area, latitude, longitude, rotation rate of the solar surface at the group's latitude, and an identification number. Comparison of the stochastic reconstructions with the daily sunspot records confirms that our empirical model is able to successfully reproduce the main properties of the solar sunspot cycle. As a by-product of this work, we show that the Gnevyshev-Waldmeier rule, which describes the spots' area-lifetime relation, is not adequate for small groups and we propose an effective correction to that relation which leads to a closer agreement between the synthetic sunspot cycle and the observations., Comment: 9 pages, 14 figures

Solar-like oscillations have been observed by {{\it Kepler}} and CoRoT in several solar-type stars. We study the variations of stellar p-mode linewidth as a function of effective temperature. Time series of 9 months of Kepler data have been used. The power spectra of 42 cool main-sequence stars and subgiants have been analysed using both Maximum Likelihood Estimators and Bayesian estimators, providing individual mode characteristics such as frequencies, linewidths and mode heights. Here we report on the mode linewidth at maximum power and at maximum mode height for these 42 stars as a function of effective temperature. We show that the mode linewidth at either maximum mode height or maximum amplitude follows a scaling relation with effective temperature, which is a combination of a power law plus a lower bound. The typical power law index is about 13 for the linewidth derived from the maximum mode height, and about 16 for the linewidth derived from the maximum amplitude while the lower bound is about 0.3 microHz and 0.7 microHz, respectively. We stress that this scaling relation is only valid for the cool main-sequence stars and subgiants, and does not have predictive power outside the temperature range of these stars., Comment: Accepted by A&A, 5 pages, 2 figures, 4 tables