Transit Timing Variation of Near-Resonance Planetary Pairs. II. Confirmation of 30 planets in 15 Multiple Planet Systems

Following on from Paper I in our series (Xie 2012), we report the confirmation by Transit Timing Variations (TTVs) of a further 30 planets in 15 multiple planet systems, using the publicly available Kepler light curves (Q0-Q16). All of these fifteen pairs are near first-order Mean Motion Resonances (MMR), showing sinusoidal TTVs consistent with theoretically predicted periods, which demonstrate they are orbiting and interacting in the same systems. Although individual masses cannot be accurately extracted based only on TTVs (because of the well known degeneracy between mass and eccentricity), the measured TTV phases and amplitudes can still place relatively tight constraints on their mass ratios and upper limits on their masses, which confirm their planetary nature. Some of these systems (KOI-274, KOI-285, KOI-370 and KOI-2672) are relatively bright and thus suitable for further follow-up observations.

Ji-Wei Xie (University of Toronto and Nanjing University)(Submitted on 9 Sep 2013)

Comments: Submitted to ApJS. 13 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables. Text follows the same style and has substantial overlap with Paper I in our series (Xie 2012, arXiv:1208.3312)

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); Galaxy Astrophysics (astro-ph.GA); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)

Cite as: arXiv:1309.2329 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1309.2329v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)

Submission history

From: Ji-Wei Xie [view email] 

[v1] Mon, 9 Sep 2013 21:29:43 GMT (1360kb)