Discovering long-period transiting exoplanets in the Roman GBTDS

Discovering long-period transiting exoplanets in the Roman GBTDS

Program ID	19105
Science Category	Exoplanets & Exoplanet Formation
Program Type	Analysis
Category	Small
Principal Investigator	Amy Tuson
PI Institution	University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Co-Investigators	Alison Duck (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Sergio Fajardo-Acosta (California Institute of Technology / IPAC) Eamonn Kerins (University of Manchester) Dana Louie (Catholic University of America) Jorge Martinez-Palomera (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) Benjamin Montet (University of New South Wales) Susan Mullally (Space Telescope Science Institute / STScI) Matthew Penny (Louisiana State University) Elisa Quintana (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) Robert Wilson (University of Maryland, College Park)
Abstract	The Roman Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey (GBTDS) is predicted to discover ~100,000 transiting exoplanets. About 20% of these will belong to long-period (> 70 days) planets and have at most one observed transit per season. These long-period transiting planets overlap in parameter space with the discoveries that will be made by the microlensing method, allowing for a direct comparison of the demographics inferred from the two populations. However, traditional transit search methods are less sensitive to single transits and they will therefore go undetected without a dedicated search effort. We propose to develop a specialized pipeline to discover, vet and model single transits in the Roman GBTDS. We will run our pipeline on ~6.3M bright (F146 less than 19 mag) FGK stars from season one and expect to discover ~1000 single transits belonging to long-period planets. We will release a catalog of single transit events and deliver a software package to facilitate future single transit searches by the community. This work will ensure that Roman reaches its full potential for transiting exoplanet science.