Bibcode
Mazeh, T.; Perets, H. B.; McQuillan, A.; Goldstein, E. S.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 801, Issue 1, article id. 3, 10 pp. (2015).
Advertised on:
3
2015
Journal
Citations
118
Refereed citations
108
Description
The observed amplitude of the rotational photometric modulation of a
star with spots should depend on the inclination of its rotational axis
relative to our line of sight. Therefore, the distribution of observed
rotational amplitudes of a large sample of stars depends on the
distribution of their projected axes of rotation. Thus, comparison of
the stellar rotational amplitudes of the Kepler objects of interest
(KOIs) with those of Kepler single stars can provide a measure to
indirectly infer the properties of the spin-orbit obliquity of Kepler
planets. We apply this technique to the large samples of 993 KOIs and
33,614 single Kepler stars in temperature range of 3500-6500 K. We find
with high significance that the amplitudes of cool KOIs are larger, on
the order of 10%, than those of the single stars. In contrast, the
amplitudes of hot KOIs are systematically lower. After correcting for an
observational bias, we estimate that the amplitudes of the hot KOIs are
smaller than the single stars by about the same factor of 10%. The
border line between the relatively larger and smaller amplitudes,
relative to the amplitudes of the single stars, occurs at about 6000 K.
Our results suggest that the cool stars have their planets aligned with
their stellar rotation, while the planets around hot stars have large
obliquities, consistent with the findings of Winn et al. and Albrecht et
al. We show that the low obliquity of the planets around cool stars
extends up to at least 50 days, a feature that is not expected in the
framework of a model that assumes the low obliquity is due to
planet-star tidal realignment.