Detectability of exomoons by examining the signals from a model of transiting exoplanets with moons

Abstract

Exomoons are natural satellites of exoplanets. Nowadays, none has been confirmed. However, a number of detection techniques have been proposed, including Transit Timing Variations (TTV) and Transit Duration Variations (TDV) techniques. From a recent study, fitting observed transit with the traditional photocentric fitting model shows unique features around the primary and secondary exomoon transits in TDV and transit depth signals, which might reduce the detectability. The aim of this work is to retrieve the variation of TTV, TDV and transit depth signals of exomoon systems with the photocentric fitting model. One year star-planet-moon transit light curves are simulated with LUNA algorithm and fit with TransitFit. The results show that neglecting the TDV and transit depth data with phase around exomoon's primary and secondary transits improve the exomoon detectability by a factor of ten and the systems with large moon orbital semi-major axis with nearly edge-on orbit around low mass stars can be detected.