Updated Orbital Decay Rate of WASP-12 with New Data from TESS and Ground-based Observations

Authors : Ahmet Cem Kutluay, Ozgur Basturk, Selçuk Yalçinkaya, Tenay Saguner Rambaldi, Sinan Kaan Yerli

Pages : 10-22

Doi:10.55064/tjaa.1307803

View : 100 | Download : 142

Publication Date : 2023-12-31

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :We investigate the orbital decay behavior of the well-studied hot Jupiter WASP-12\\,b orbiting its late-F host star on a 1.09-day orbit by analyzing its transit timings. Thanks to precise photometric data covering nearly 15 years of observations from the space and the ground since the discovery of the planet, including a transit light curve of our own, it became possible to study this behaviour in its details. This work updates the orbital period to a new value of $P = 1.0914202527 \\pm 0.000000039\\,\\text{days}$ and agrees with the previous finding that the planetary orbit has been shrinking with an updated rate of $-31.03 \\pm 0.94\\,\\text{ms yr}^{-1}$. This corresponds to an orbital decay timescale of $\\tau =P/|\\dot{P}| = 3.04 \\pm 0.09\\,\\text{Myr}$ that we attribute to the strong tidal interactions between the host-star and the planet. We also update the reduced stellar tidal quality factor as $Q_{*}^{\\prime} = (1.72 \\pm 0.39) \\times$ $10^{5}$, which corresponds to the lower bound of the previously reported values of the parameter.
Keywords : orbital decay, methods data analysis, techniques photometric, stars individual WASP 12, planetary systems