The Potential of Detecting Nearby Terrestrial Planets in the HZ with Different Methods

Abstract

Terrestrial planets in the habitable zone (hereafter HZ) around nearby stars are of great interest and provide a good sample to characterize their habitability. In this paper, we collect a nearby star catalog within 20 pc according to the Gaia Catalog of Nearby Stars, complete the physical parameters of the stars, and select stars that are not brown or white dwarfs. After selection, a sample of 2234 main-sequence stars is used to estimate the extended HZ. Then we inject Earth-like planets into the extended HZ around each star and calculate the signals with four methods, i.e., velocity amplitude for radial velocity, transit probability and depth for transit, stellar displacements for astrometry, and contrast and angular separation for imaging. Considering a typical noise model based on classic instruments, e.g., ESPRESSO, Kepler, Gaia, HabEx, and LIFE, we predict the highest possible detection number of Earth-like planets via different methods in the best-case hypothetical scenario. According to this, we conclude that both astrometry and imaging have the potential to detect nearby Earth-like planets around G-type stars, while radial velocity has the potential to detect 2% of nearby Earth-like planets around M stars with a precision of 0.2 m s−1. Our work also provides the precision requirements for future missions to reveal the nearby Earth-like planet in the HZ.