Modelling light and velocity curves of exoplanet hosts

Abstract

Research in extrasolar-planet science is data-driven. With the advent of radial-velocity instruments like HARPS and HARPS-N, and transit space missions like Kepler, our ability to discover and characterise extrasolar planets is no longer limited by instrumental precision but by our ability to model the data accurately. This chapter presents the models that describe radial-velocity measurements and transit light curves. I begin by deriving the solution of the two-body problem and from there, the equations describing the radial velocity of a planet-host star and the distance between star and planet centres, necessary to model transit light curves. Stochastic models are then presented and I delineate how they are used to model complex physical phenomena affecting the exoplanet data sets, such as stellar activity. Finally, I give a brief overview of the processes of Bayesian inference, focussing on the construction of likelihood functions and prior probability distributions. In particular, I describe different methods to specify ignorance priors.