Lee J. Rosenthal

Lee J. Rosenthal

Auto-generated profile, based on publicly available information

Lee J. Rosenthal

Department of Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

11Years (2016-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

View All Publications
1 July 2021 in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
LRLee J. Rosenthal
Lee J. Rosenthal
BFBenjamin J. Fulton
Benjamin J. Fulton
LHLea A. Hirsch
Lea A. Hirsch
HIHoward T. Isaacson
Howard T. Isaacson
AHAndrew W. Howard
Andrew W. Howard
JWJason T. Wright
Jason T. Wright
We present a high-precision radial velocity (RV) survey of 719 FGKM stars, which host 164 known exoplanets and 14 newly discovered or revised exoplanets and substellar companions. This catalog updated the orbital parameters of known exoplanets and long-period candidates, some of which have decades-longer observational baselines than they did upon initial detection. The newly discovered exoplanets range from warm sub-Neptunes and super-Earths to cold gas giants. We present the catalog sample selection criteria, as well as over 100,000 RV measurements, which come from the Keck-HIRES, APF-Levy, and Lick-Hamilton spectrographs. We introduce the new RV search pipeline RVSearch (https://california-planet-search.github.io/rvsearch/) that we used to generate our planet catalog, and we make it available to the public as an open-source Python package. This paper is the first study in a planned series that will measure exoplanet occurrence rates and compare exoplanet populations, including studies of giant planet occurrence beyond the water ice line, and eccentricity distributions to explore giant planet formation pathways. We have made public all radial velocities and associated data that we use in this catalog.

1 July 2021 in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
BFBenjamin J. Fulton
Benjamin J. Fulton
LRLee J. Rosenthal
Lee J. Rosenthal
LHLea A. Hirsch
Lea A. Hirsch
HIHoward Isaacson
Howard Isaacson
AHAndrew W. Howard
Andrew W. Howard
JWJason T. Wright
Jason T. Wright
We used high-precision radial velocity measurements of FGKM stars to determine the occurrence of giant planets as a function of orbital separation spanning 0.03–30 au. Giant planets are more prevalent at orbital distances of 1–10 au compared to orbits interior or exterior of this range. The increase in planet occurrence at ∼1 au by a factor of ∼4 is highly statistically significant. A fall-off in giant planet occurrence at larger orbital distances is favored over models with flat or increasing occurrence. We measure 14.1 − 1.8 + 2.0 giant planets per 100 stars with semimajor axes of 2–8 au and 8.9 − 2.4 + 3.0 giant planets per 100 stars in the range 8–32 au, a decrease in occurrence with increasing orbital separation that is significant at the ∼2σ level. We find that the occurrence rate of sub-Jovian planets (0.1–1 Jupiter masses) is also enhanced for 1–10 au orbits. This suggests that lower-mass planets may share the formation or migration mechanisms that drive the increased prevalence near the water–ice line for their Jovian counterparts. Our measurements of cold gas giant occurrence are consistent with the latest results from direct imaging surveys and gravitational lensing surveys despite different stellar samples. We corroborate previous findings that giant planet occurrence increases with stellar mass and metallicity.

22 February 2021 in The Astronomical Journal
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
LHLea A. Hirsch
Lea A. Hirsch
LRLee Rosenthal
Lee Rosenthal
BFBenjamin J. Fulton
Benjamin J. Fulton
AHAndrew W. Howard
Andrew W. Howard
DCDavid R. Ciardi
David R. Ciardi
BMBruce Macintosh
Bruce Macintosh
We explore the impact of outer stellar companions on the occurrence rate of giant planets detected with radial velocities. We searched for stellar and planetary companions to a volume-limited sample of solar-type stars within 25 pc. Using adaptive optics imaging observations from the Lick 3 m and Palomar 200″ Telescopes, we characterized the multiplicity of our sample stars, down to the bottom of the main sequence. With these data, we confirm field star multiplicity statistics from previous surveys. We additionally combined three decades of radial velocity (RV) data from the California Planet Search with newly collected RV data from Keck/HIRES and the Automated Planet Finder/Levy Spectrometer to search for planetary companions in these same systems. Using an updated catalog of both stellar and planetary companions, as well as detailed injection/recovery tests to determine our sensitivity and completeness, we measured the occurrence rate of planets among the single- and multiple-star systems. We found that planets with masses in the range of 0.1–10 M J and with semimajor axes of 0.1–10 au have an occurrence rate of planets per star when they orbit single stars and an occurrence rate of 0.12 ± 0.04 planets per star when they orbit a star in a binary system. Breaking the sample down by the binary separation, we found that only one planet-hosting binary system had a binary separation <100 au, and none had a separation <50 au. These numbers yielded planet occurrence rates of planets per star for binaries with separation a B > 100 au and planets per star for binaries with separation a B < 100 au. The similarity in the planet occurrence rate around single stars and wide primaries implies that wide binary systems should actually host more planets than single-star systems, since they have more potential host stars. We estimated a system-wide planet occurrence rate of 0.3 planets per wide binary system for binaries with separations a B > 100 au. Finally, we found evidence that giant planets in binary systems have a different semimajor-axis distribution than their counterparts in single-star systems. The planets in the single-star sample had a significantly higher occurrence rate outside of 1 au than inside 1 au by nearly 4σ, in line with expectations that giant planets are most common near the snow line. However, the planets in the wide binary systems did not follow this distribution, but rather had equivalent occurrence rates interior and exterior to 1 au. This may point to binary-mediated planet migration acting on our sample, even in binaries wider than 100 au.

17 August 2022 in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
LRLee J. Rosenthal
Lee J. Rosenthal
HKHeather A. Knutson
Heather A. Knutson
YCYayaati Chachan
Yayaati Chachan
FDFei Dai
Fei Dai
AHAndrew W. Howard
Andrew W. Howard
JWJason T. Wright
Jason T. Wright
We use a high-precision radial velocity survey of FGKM stars to study the conditional occurrence of two classes of planets: close-in small planets (0.023–1 au, 2–30 M ⊕) and distant giant planets (0.23–10 au, 30–6000 M ⊕). We find that 41 − 13 + 15 % of systems with a close-in, small planet also host an outer giant, compared to 17.6 − 1.9 + 2.4 % for stars irrespective of small planet presence. This implies that small planet hosts may be enhanced in outer giant occurrences compared to all stars with 1.7σ significance. Conversely, we estimate that 42 − 13 + 17 % of cold giant hosts also host an inner small planet, compared to 27.6 − 4.8 + 5.8 % of stars irrespective of cold giant presence. We also find that more massive and close-in giant planets are not associated with small inner planets. Specifically, our sample indicates that small planets are less likely to have outer giant companions more massive than approximately 120 M ⊕ and within 0.3–3 au, than to have less massive or more distant giant companions, with ∼2.2σ confidence. This implies that massive gas giants within 0.3–3 au may suppress inner small planet formation. Additionally, we compare the host-star metallicity distributions for systems with only small planets and those with both small planets and cold giants. In agreement with previous studies, we find that stars in our survey that only host small planets have a metallicity distribution that is consistent with the broader solar-metallicity-median sample, while stars that host both small planets and gas giants are distinctly metal rich with ∼2.3σ confidence.

20 February 2023 in The Astronomical Journal
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
JRJean-Baptiste Ruffio
Jean-Baptiste Ruffio
KHKatelyn Horstman
Katelyn Horstman
DMDimitri Mawet
Dimitri Mawet
LRLee J. Rosenthal
Lee J. Rosenthal
KBKonstantin Batygin
Konstantin Batygin
JXJerry W. Xuan
Jerry W. Xuan
The detection of satellites around extrasolar planets, so called exomoons, remains a largely unexplored territory. In this work, we study the potential of detecting these elusive objects from radial velocity monitoring of self-luminous, directly imaged planets. This technique is now possible thanks to the development of dedicated instruments combining the power of high-resolution spectroscopy and high-contrast imaging. First, we demonstrate a sensitivity to satellites with a mass ratio of 1%–4% at separations similar to the Galilean moons from observations of a brown-dwarf companion (HR 7672 B; K mag = 13; 0.″7 separation) with the Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer (R ∼ 35,000 in the K band) at the W. M. Keck Observatory. Current instrumentation is therefore already sensitive to large unresolved satellites that could be forming from gravitational instability akin to binary star formation. Using end-to-end simulations, we then estimate that future instruments such as the Multi-Object Diffraction-limited High-resolution Infrared Spectrograph, planned for the Thirty Meter Telescope, should be sensitive to satellites with mass ratios of ∼10−4. Such small moons would likely form in a circumplanetary disk similar to the Jovian satellites in the solar system. Looking for the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect could also be an interesting pathway to detecting the smallest moons on short orbital periods. Future exomoon discoveries will allow precise mass measurements of the substellar companions that they orbit and provide key insight into the formation of exoplanets. They would also help constrain the population of habitable Earth-sized moons orbiting gas giants in the habitable zone of their stars.

28 April 2020 in The Astronomical Journal
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
XGXueying Guo
Xueying Guo
ICIan J. M. Crossfield
Ian J. M. Crossfield
DDDiana Dragomir
Diana Dragomir
MKMolly R. Kosiarek
Molly R. Kosiarek
JLJoshua Lothringer
Joshua Lothringer
LWLauren M. Weiss
Lauren M. Weiss
Recent years have seen increasing interest in the characterization of sub-Neptune-sized planets because of their prevalence in the Galaxy, contrasted with their absence in our solar system. HD 97658 is one of the brightest stars hosting a planet of this kind, and we present the transmission spectrum of this planet by combining four Hubble Space Telescope transits, 12 Spitzer/IRAC transits, and eight MOST transits of this system. Our transmission spectrum has a higher signal-to-noise ratio than those from previous works, and the result suggests that the slight increase in transit depth from wavelength 1.1–1.7 μm reported in previous works on the transmission spectrum of this planet is likely systematic. Nonetheless, our atmospheric modeling results are inconclusive, as no model provides an excellent match to our data. Nonetheless, we find that atmospheres with high C/O ratios (C/O ≳ 0.8) and metallicities of ≳100× solar metallicity are favored. We combine the mid-transit times from all of the new Spitzer and MOST observations and obtain an updated orbital period of P = 9.489295 ± 0.000005, with a best-fit transit time center at T 0 = 2456361.80690 ± 0.00038 (BJD). No transit timing variations are found in this system. We also present new measurements of the stellar rotation period (34 ± 2 days) and stellar activity cycle (9.6 yr) of the host star HD 97658. Finally, we calculate and rank the Transmission Spectroscopy Metric of all confirmed planets cooler than 1000 K and with sizes between 1 R ⊕ and 4 R ⊕. We find that at least a third of small planets cooler than 1000 K can be well characterized using James Webb Space Telescope, and of those, HD 97658b is ranked fifth, meaning that it remains a high-priority target for atmospheric characterization.