2419

Laura Affer

The HADES RV program with HARPS-N at TNG

Many efforts to detect Earth-like planets around low-mass stars are currently devoted to almost every extra-solar planet search. M dwarfs stand as ideal targets for Doppler radial velocity searches as their lower masses and luminosities make low-mass planets orbiting within their habitable zones more easily detectable than those around higher-mass stars. Nonetheless, the statistics of the frequency of this kind of planet hosted by low-mass stars remains poorly constrained.
Our M-dwarf radial velocity monitoring with HARPS-N within the HARPS-N Red Dwarf Exoplanet Survey Radial Velocity (HADES) project started in 2012 and is contributing to the widening of the current statistics through the in-depth analysis of accurate radial velocity observations in a narrow range of spectral sub-types from M0 to M3, to investigate the planetary population around a well-defined class of host stars.
The HADES project is the result of a collaborative effort between the Italian Global Architecture of Planetary Systems (GAPS) Consortium, the Institut de Cičncies de l'Espai de Catalunya (ICE), and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC).
Two photometric programs regularly and almost simultaneously follow up the sample of M stars to characterize the stellar activity, to highlight periods that are due to chromospheric inhomogeneities modulated by stellar rotation and differential rotation, and thus to distinguish from the periodic signals those due to activity and to the presence of planetary companions. We present the complete analysis of the HADES survey and the results obtained concerning the statistical, activity, and characterization part and the planet revealing part, around M dwarfs.