# EDEN Survey: Small Transiting Planet Detection Limits and Constraints on the Occurrence Rates for Late M Dwarfs within 15 pc

**Authors:** Jeremy Dietrich, Dániel Apai, Martin Schlecker, Kevin K. Hardegree-Ullman, Benjamin V. Rackham, Nicolas Kurtovic, Karan Molaverdikhani, Paul Gabor, Thomas Henning, Wen-Ping Chen, Luigi Mancini, Alex Bixel, Aidan Gibbs, Richard P. Boyle, Samantha Brown-Sevilla, Remo Burn, Timmy N. Delage, Lizxandra Flores-Rivera, Riccardo Franceschi, Gabriele Pichierri  
**arXiv:** [2302.04138](https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04138)  
**Date:** 2023-02-08  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/fr/paper/2302.04138v1/

## Abstract

Earth-sized exoplanets that transit nearby, late spectral type red dwarfs will be prime targets for atmospheric characterization in the coming decade. Such systems, however, are difficult to find via wide-field transit surveys like Kepler or TESS. Consequently, the presence of such transiting planets is unexplored and the occurrence rates of short-period Earth-sized planets around late M dwarfs remain poorly constrained. Here, we present the deepest photometric monitoring campaign of 22 nearby late M dwarf stars, using data from over 500 nights on seven 1-2 meter class telescopes. Our survey includes all known single quiescent northern late M dwarfs within 15 pc. We use transit-injection-and-recovery tests to quantify the completeness of our survey, successfully identify most ($>80\%$) transiting short-period (0.5-1 d) super-Earths ($R > 1.9 R_\oplus$), and are sensitive ($\sim50\%$) to transiting Earth-sized planets ($1.0-1.2 R_\oplus$). Our high sensitivity to transits with a near-zero false positive rate demonstrates an efficient survey strategy. Our survey does not yield a transiting planet detection, yet it provides the most sensitive upper limits on transiting planets orbiting our target stars. Finally, we explore multiple hypotheses about the occurrence rates of short-period planets (from Earth-sized planets to giant planets) around late M dwarfs. We show, for example, that giant planets at short periods ($<1$ day) are uncommon around our target stars. Our dataset provides some insight into occurrence rates of short-period planets around TRAPPIST-1-like stars, and our results can help test planetary formation and system evolution models, as well as guide future observations of nearby late M dwarfs.