Power-2 limb-darkening law from STAGGER-grid Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Maxted P.F.L.
  2. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

Inaccurate limb-darkening models can be a significant source of error in the analysis of the light curves for transiting exoplanet and eclipsing binary star systems, particularly for high-precision light curves at optical wavelengths. The power-2 limb-darkening law, I_{lambda}_({mu})=1-c(1-{mu}^{alpha}^), has recently been proposed as a good compromise between complexity and precision in the treatment of limb-darkening. My aim is to develop a practical implementation of the power-2 limb-darkening law and to quantify the accuracy of this implementation. I have used synthetic spectra based on the 3D stellar atmosphere models from the Stagger-grid to compute the limb- darkening for several passbands (UBVRI, CHEOPS, TESS, Kepler, etc.). The parameters of the power-2 limb-darkening laws are optimized using a least-squares fit to a simulated light curve computed directly from the tabulated I_{lambda}_({mu}) values. I use the transformed parameters h_1_=1-c(1-2^(-{alpha})^) and h_2_=c2^(-{alpha}^) to directly compare these optimized limb-darkening parameters to the limb darkening measured from Kepler light curves of 16 transiting exoplanet systems. The posterior probability distributions (PPDs) of the transformed parameters h_1_ and h_2_ resulting from the light curve analysis are found to be much less strongly correlated than the PPDs for c and {alpha}. The agreement between the computed and observed values of (h_1_, h_2_) is generally very good but there are significant differences between the observed and computed values for Kepler-17, the only star in the sample that shows significant variability between the eclipses due to magnetic activity (star spots). The tabulation of h_1_ and h_2_ provided here can be used to accurately model the light curves of transiting exoplanets. I also provide estimates of the priors that should be applied to transformed parameters h_1_ and h_2_ based on my analysis of the Kepler light curves of 16 stars transiting exoplanets.

Keywords
  1. Eclipsing binary stars
  2. Astronomical models
  3. Stellar atmospheres
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2018A&A...616A..39M
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/616/A39
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/616/A39
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.36160039

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History

2018-08-10T12:38:00Z
Resource record created
2018-08-10T12:38:00Z
Created
2018-09-26T07:09:29Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr