Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 716, Issue 2, Pages 1551-1565Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/716/2/1551
Keywords
instrumentation: adaptive optics; methods: data analysis; techniques: image processing
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [0334916, 0215793, 0520822]
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NNG05GJ86G]
- NASA
- CNRS/INSU
- National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Adaptive Optics [AST 98-76783]
- California Institute of Technology
- AMNH Kade Fellowship
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
- Division Of Astronomical Sciences [0520822, 0334916] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Astronomical Sciences
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien [0908484, 0215793] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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The Lyot project used an optimized Lyot coronagraph with extreme adaptive optics at the 3.63 m Advanced Electro-Optical System telescope to observe 86 stars from 2004 to 2007. In this paper, we give an overview of the survey results and a statistical analysis of the observed nondetections around 58 of our targets to place constraints on the population of substellar companions to nearby stars. The observations did not detect any companion in the substellar regime. Since null results can be as important as detections, we analyzed each observation to determine the characteristics of the companions that can be ruled out. For this purpose, we use a Monte Carlo approach to produce artificial companions and determine their detectability by comparison with the sensitivity curve for each star. All the non-detection results are combined using a Bayesian approach and we provide upper limits on the population of giant exoplanets and brown dwarfs for this sample of stars. Our nondetections confirm the rarity of brown dwarfs around solar-like stars and we constrain the frequency of massive substellar companions (M > 40 M-J) at orbital separation between and 10 and 50 AU to be less than or similar to 20%.
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