Transforming the Demographics of Hot Jupiters Around M dwarfs with Roman
| Program ID | 19103 |
|---|---|
| Science Category | Exoplanets & Exoplanet Formation |
| Program Type | Analysis |
| Category | Small |
| Principal Investigator | Elisa Quintana |
| PI Institution | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Co-Investigators |
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| Abstract | Hot Jupiters occur around 1% of solar-type stars but are far rarer around M dwarfs, with less than 30 well-characterized systems known; too few for robust demographic analysis. We propose to use Roman Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey Season 1 data to (1) construct the largest catalog of M~dwarf hot Jupiter candidates from a million monitored M~dwarfs, (2) measure the completeness-corrected occurrence rate as a function of spectral subtype and orbital period, and (3) test whether the giant planet-metallicity correlation extends to M dwarfs by exploiting the Galactic radial metallicity gradient as a statistical distance proxy. We expect 60-100 detections, a significant increase in the current number, sufficient to distinguish between core accretion and metallicity-independent formation channels. |