Mitigating astrometric bias in barycentric correction with PEXO

Abstract

ABSTRACT Extremely precise radial velocity is essential for the detection of sub-m s−1 radial velocity of stars induced by Earth-like planets. Although modelling of the barycentric correction of radial velocity could achieve 1 mm s−1 precision, the input astrometry could be biased due to non-linear motions of stars caused by companions. To account for astrometry induced bias in barycentric correction, we correct for astrometric bias by minimizing the scatter of reduced RV data with Precise EXOplanetology (PEXO). In particular, we apply this method to the barycentric correction for 266 stars from HARPS data archive. We find that the RV scatter for eight targets are significantly reduced due to correction of astrometric bias. Among these targets, two targets exhibit bias caused by known massive companions, while for the remaining six targets, the bias could be attributed to unknown companions or Gaia systematics. Furthermore, 14 targets have an astrometry induced annual RV variation higher than 0.05  m s−1, and 10 of them are closer than 10 pc. We show the results of Barnard’s star as an example, and find that an annual RV bias of 10 cm s−1 is mitigated by replacing BarCor by PEXO as the barycentric correction code. Our work demonstrates the necessity of astrometric bias correction and the utilization of barycentric correction code within a relativistic framework in high-precision RV for the detection of Earth-like planets.