Exoplanet detection capability of the COROT space mission

¹ LESIA, UMR8109, Observatoire de Paris, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France e-mail: Daniel.Rouan@obspm.fr
² Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, UMR 8617, Université Paris XI, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France e-mail: Alain.Leger@ias.fr

Corresponding author: P. Bordé, Pascal.Borde@obspm.fr

Received: 18 July 2003
Accepted: 25 April 2003

Abstract

COROT will be the first high precision photometric satellite to be launched with the aim of detecting exoplanets by the transit method. In this paper, we present the simulations we have carried out in order to assess the detection capability of COROT. Using the model of stellar population synthesis of the Galaxy developed at Besançon Observatory (Robin & Crézé 1986) and a simple cross-correlation technique (Bordé et al. 2001), we find that COROT has the capacity to detect numerous exoplanets, not only Jupiter and Uranus-class ones, but also hot terrestrial planets, if they exist. We show that small exoplanets should be mainly gathered around 14–15th magnitude K2–M2 dwarfs and giant exoplanets around 15–16th magnitude F7–G2 dwarfs. We study the effect of crowding and the impact of a high stellar variability noise that both reduce the detection capability of the instrument.