Searching for the Signatures of Terrestrial Planets in “Hot” Analogs

J. I. González Hernández, E. Delgado Mena, G. Israelian, S. G. Sousa, N. C. Santos, S. Udry

Abstract
The Sun has been suggested to have a slightly low refractory-to-volatile abundance ratio when compared with field solar twins. This result may be interpreted as due to the fact that the refractory elements were trapped in rocky planets at the formation of the Solar System.
A detailed and differential chemical abundance study was already performed in order to investigate this hypothesis in solar analogs with and without detected planets using high-resolution and high-S/N HARPS and UVES spectra of a relatively large sample of solar analogs with and without planets. We obtained very similar behaviours for both samples of stars with and without planets, even for two stars with super-Earth-like planets, which may indicate that this solar trend may not be related to the presence of terrestrial planets.
The depletion signature should be imprinted once the convection zone reaches the current size. This suggests that stars hotter than the Sun should show this effect enhanced, due to their narrower convective zone. However, to avoid non-LTE, 3D, and other effects, we need to identify “hot” analogs with a T_eff ~ 6100 K, to perform a differential analysis.
Here, we present the preliminary results of our analysis using HARPS and UVES high resolution and high-S/N spectra of a sample of ~ 60 “hot”analogs with and without planets, trying to search for some “hot” reference analogs.

From Interacting Binaries to Exoplanets: Essential Modeling Tools
Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 282
(Eds.) M. T. Richards, I. Hubeny

Cambridge University Press
Vol. 7, Page 480
2012

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