Dr. Angelle Tanner
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
In the past few years, there have been public claims that SIM is unnecessary as a terrestrial planet search tool since radial velocity studies will be able to reach sensitivities of 10 cm/s. This is adequate to detect terrestrial planets in the habitable zones of M and K dwarfs. However, it has not been demonstrated that the RV technique will be sensitive to terrestrial planets at these separations under the different sources of stellar jitter inherent to M dwarfs – granulation, star spots, flares and p-mode oscillations. Therefore, we have designed a study to investigate the astrophysical jitter inherent to potential SIM M dwarf targets using space (i.e. CoRot, HST, Spitzer, MOST, etc) and ground-based, ultra-precise photometric data. The goal of my SIM Science study is to present a thorough comparison of the sensitivity to terrestrial planets using either SIM or 10 cm/s radial velocity measurements with realistic noise sources. Since the exoplanet taskforce has recently placed M dwarfs as high priority targets, the results of this study can be used to guide near-term planet search programs as well as promote SIM. Here, I’ll present the results of this ongoing study and talk about M dwarf exoplanet studies as a whole.
.