Abstract
We measure planet occurrence rates using the planet candidates discovered by the Q1-Q16 Kepler pipeline search. This study examines planet occurrence rates for the Kepler GK dwarf target sample for planet radii, 0.75 ≤slant {R}{{p}} ≤slant 2.5 {R}\oplus , and orbital periods, 50 ≤slant {P}{orb} ≤slant 300 days, with an emphasis on a thorough exploration and identification of the most important sources of systematic uncertainties. Integrating over this parameter space, we measure an occurrence rate of F0 = 0.77 planets per star, with an allowed range of 0.3≤slant {F}0 ≤slant 1.9. The allowed range takes into account both statistical and systematic uncertainties, and values of F0 beyond the allowed range are significantly in disagreement with our analysis. We generally find higher planet occurrence rates and a steeper increase in planet occurrence rates toward small planets than previous studies of the Kepler GK dwarf sample. Through extrapolation, we find that the one year orbital period terrestrial planet occurrence rate {\zeta }1.0 = 0.1, with an allowed range of 0.01≤slant {\zeta }1.0 ≤slant 2, where {\zeta }1.0 is defined as the number of planets per star within 20% of the {R}{{p}} and {P}{orb} of Earth. For G dwarf hosts, the {\zeta }1.0 parameter space is a subset of the larger {η }\oplus parameter space, thus {\zeta }1.0 places a lower limit on {η }\oplus for G dwarf hosts. From our analysis, we identify the leading sources of systematics impacting Kepler occurrence rate determinations as reliability of the planet candidate sample, planet radii, pipeline completeness, and stellar parameters.
Author
Burke, Christopher J.; Christiansen, Jessie L.; Mullally, F.; Seader, Shawn; Huber, Daniel; Rowe, Jason F.; Coughlin, Jeffrey L.; Thompson, Susan E.; Catanzarite, Joseph; Clarke, Bruce D.; Morton, Timothy D.; Caldwell, Douglas A.; Bryson, Stephen T.; Haas, Michael R.; Batalha, Natalie M.; Jenkins, Jon M.; Tenenbaum, Peter; Twicken, Joseph D.; Li, Jie; Quintana, Elisa; Barclay, Thomas; Henze, Christopher E.; Borucki, William J.; Howell, Steve B.; Still, Martin
Journal
Astrophysical Journal
Paper Publication Date
August 2015
Paper Type
Astrostatistics