The Radial Velocity Method for the Detection of Exoplanets

Abstract

The radial velocity (RV) method has provided the foundation for the research field of exoplanets. It created the field by discovering the first exoplanets and then blazed a trail by detecting over 1000 exoplanets in orbit around other stars. The method also plays a vital role in transit searches by providing the planetary mass needed to calculate the bulk density of the exoplanet. The RV method requires a wide range of techniques: novel instrumentation for making precise RV measurements, clever techniques for extracting the periodic signals due to planets from the RV data, tools for assessing their statistical significance, and programs for calculating the Keplerian orbital parameters. Finally, RV measurements have become so precise that the measurement error is now dominated by the intrinsic stellar noise. New tools have to be developed to extract planetary signals from RV variability originating from the star. In these series of lectures I will cover (1) basic instrumentation for stellar radial velocity methods, (2) methods for achieving high radial velocity precision, (3) finding periodic signals in radial velocity data, (4) Keplerian orbits, (5) sources of errors for radial velocity measurements, and (6) dealing with the contribution of stellar noise to the radial velocity measurement.