On the Effectiveness of the Planetary Infrared Excess (PIE) Technique to Retrieve the Parameters of Multiplanet Systems around M Dwarfs: A Case Study on the TRAPPIST-1 System

Abstract

The planetary infrared excess (PIE) technique has the potential to efficiently detect and characterize the thermal spectra of both transiting and non-transiting exoplanets. However, the technique has not been evaluated on multiplanet systems. We use the TRAPPIST-1 system as our test bed to evaluate PIE’s ability to resolve multiple planets. We follow the unfolding discoveries in the TRAPPIST-1 system and examine the results from the PIE technique at every stage. We test the information gained from observations with JWST and next-generation infrared observatories like the proposed MIRECLE mission concept. We find that even in the case where only the star is known, the PIE technique would infer the presence of multiple planets in the system. The precise number inferred is dependent on the wavelength range of the observation and the noise level of the data. We also find that in such a tightly packed, multiplanet system such as TRAPPIST-1, the PIE technique struggles to constrain the semimajor axis beyond prior knowledge. Despite these drawbacks and the fact that JWST is less sensitive to the fluxes from planets g and h, with strong priors in their orbital parameters we are able to constrain their equilibrium temperatures. We conclude that the PIE technique may enable the discovery of unknown exoplanets around solar-neighborhood M dwarfs and could characterize known planets around them.