A Search for Rotation Periods in 1000 TESS Objects of Interest

Abstract

The high-quality light curves from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) represent a unique laboratory for the study of stellar rotation, which is a fundamental observable driving stellar and planetary evolution, including planetary atmospheres and impacting habitability conditions and the genesis of life around stars. As of 2020 April 14, this mission delivered public light curves for 1000 TESS objects of interest (TOIs), observed with a 2 minute cadence during the first 20 months of the mission. Here, we present a search for rotation signatures in these TOIs, using fast Fourier transform, Lomb–Scargle, and wavelet techniques, accompanied by a rigorous visual inspection. This effort revealed 163 targets with rotation signatures, 131 of which present unambiguous rotation periods ranging from 0.321 and 13.219 days, whereas 32 of them present dubious rotation periodicities. Of these stars, 109 show flux fluctuations whose root cause is not clearly identified. For 714 TOIs, the light curves show a noisy behavior, corresponding to typically low-amplitude signals. Our analysis has also revealed 10 TOI stars with pulsation periodicities ranging from 0.049 to 2.995 days and four eclipsing binaries. With upcoming TESS data releases, our periodicity analysis will be expanded to almost all TOI stars, thereby contributing in defining criteria for follow-up strategy itself, and the study of star–planet interactions, surface dynamic of host stars, and habitability conditions in planets, among other aspects. In this context, a living catalog is maintained on the Filtergraph visualization portal at https://filtergraph.com/tess_rotation_tois .