Princeton University Thunch Talk

Although hot Jupiters were the first exoplanets to be discovered, and hundreds are now known, the current sample is drawn mainly from a heterogeneous collection of ground-based transit surveys. Our simulations show that the distribution of hot Jupiter properties may depend on stellar type, but our current knowledge is too heterogeneous and incomplete to draw strong statistical inferences. The TESS mission will be essentially complete to detecting transiting HJs around relatively bright stars across the entire sky, presenting an opportunity to unify and expand upon previous transit searches, leading to a large and statistically useful sample of hot Jupiters. We estimate that a magnitude-limited sample of transiting HJs orbiting stars brighter than G < 12.5 will comprise approximately 400 planets, an order-of-magnitude increase over the best statistical sample currently available. Of these, roughly 40% are already known, with the remainder being new detections from TESS. Our survey seeks to confirm many of these planet candidates with ground-based follow-up observations. I will talk about the motivations and design of our survey and present an update on its progress, which has confirmed 10 new planets and is making headway toward confirming > 30 more.