Planets and stellar activity: hide and seek in the CoRoT-7 system

TLDR: In this paper, the authors used the off-transit variations in the star's light curve to estimate the radial-velocity variations induced by the suppression of convective blueshift and the flux blocked by starspots.

Abstract: Since the discovery of the transiting super-Earth CoRoT-7b, several investigations have yielded different results for the number and masses of planets present in the system, mainly owing to the star's high level of activity. We re-observed CoRoT-7 in 2012 January with both HARPS and CoRoT, so that we now have the benefit of simultaneous radial-velocity and photometric data. This allows us to use the off-transit variations in the star's light curve to estimate the radial-velocity variations induced by the suppression of convective blueshift and the flux blocked by starspots. To account for activity-related effects in the radial velocities which do not have a photometric signature, we also include an additional activity term in the radial-velocity model, which we treat as a Gaussian process with the same covariance properties (and hence the same frequency structure) as the light curve. Our model was incorporated into a Monte Carlo Markov Chain in order to make a precise determination of the orbits of CoRoT-7b and CoRoT-7c. We measure the masses of planets b and c to be 4.73 +/- 0.95 and 13.56 +/- 1.08 M-circle plus, respectively. The density of CoRoT-7b is (6.61 +/- 1.72)(R-p/1.58 R-circle plus)(-3) g cm(-3), which is compatible with a rocky composition. We search for evidence of an additional planet d, identified by previous authors with a period close to 9 d. We are not able to confirm the existence of a planet with this orbital period, which is close to the second harmonic of the stellar rotation at similar to 7.9 d. Using Bayesian model selection, we find that a model with two planets plus activity-induced variations is most favoured.