# Incorporating transit-timing variations¶

The transit fits that have been presented so far in the tutorials assume that the transit times, $$T$$ are exactly periodic, i.e., they can be predicted by the simple relationship

$$T(n) = t_0 + n P$$,

where $$t_0$$ is the time-of-transit center at epoch zero ($$n=0$$), $$P$$ is the period of the orbit and $$n$$ is the transit epoch. In some particular cases, however, this simple relationship might not be satisfied. Because of gravitational/dynamical interactions with additional bodies in the system, the exoplanet under study might undergo what we usually refer to as transit timing variations (TTVs), where the transit times are not exactly periodic and vary due to these (in principle unknown) interactions. If we define those variations as extra perturbations $$\delta t_n$$ to the above defined timing equation, we can write the time-of-transit centers as:

$$T(n) = t_0 + n P + \delta t_n$$.

Within juliet, there are two ways to fit for these perturbations. One way is to fit for each of the $$T(n)$$ directly, while there is also an option to fit for some perturbations $$\delta t_n$$. In this tutorial, we explore why those two possible parametrizations are allowed, and what they imply for the fits we perform. We will use the HATS-46 b TESS dataset, which we already analyzed in the Lightcurve fitting with juliet section, as a case-study in this tutorial.

## Fitting for the transit times directly¶

If we choose to fit for the transit times $$T(n)$$ directly, juliet will expect priors for these but it is expected that you will not supply priors for $$t_0$$ and $$P$$ (e.g., t0_p1 and P_p1). The reason for this is that these latter parameters will be computed directly from each sample of the $$T(n)$$ as the intercept ($$t_0$$) and slope ($$P$$) that best-fits (in a least-squares sense) the sampled $$T(n)$$. This is, of course, a matter of definition — we are assuming that what we refer to when we speak of $$P$$ and $$t_0$$ in a TTV fit are the slope and intercept, respectively, of a last-squares fit to the transit times.

Within juliet, the transit times are defined through the parameter T_p1_instrument_n — here, instrument defines the instrument where that transit occurs (e.g., TESS), n the transit epoch and, in this case, we are fitting the transit-times to planet p1; juliet is able to handle different perturbations for different planets in the system.

Let’s try finding how big the perturbations are on the HATS-46 b TESS dataset. For this, we use the same priors used in section Lightcurve fitting with juliet, but we remove the priors on $$t_0$$ and $$P$$ (i.e., t0_p1 and P_p1), and add the priors for each time of transit. We will assume normal, zero-mean gaussian priors with a standard deviation of 0.1 days (i.e., about 2.4 hours) for the planet. We define these along the other priors previously defined for HATS-46 b as follows:

import juliet

# First, load original dataset we used in the previous tutorial:
t, f, ferr  = juliet.get_TESS_data('https://archive.stsci.edu/hlsps/'+\
'tess_v1_lc.fits')

times, fluxes, fluxes_error = {},{},{}
times['TESS'], fluxes['TESS'], fluxes_error['TESS'] = t,f,ferr

# Define same parameters, distributions and hyperparameters defined in
# that same tutorial:
params = ['r1_p1','r2_p1','q1_TESS','q2_TESS','ecc_p1','omega_p1',\
'rho', 'mdilution_TESS', 'mflux_TESS', 'sigma_w_TESS']

dists = ['uniform','uniform','uniform','uniform','fixed','fixed',\
'loguniform', 'fixed', 'normal', 'loguniform']

hyperps = [[0.,1], [0.,1.], [0., 1.], [0., 1.], 0.0, 90.,\
[100., 10000.], 1.0, [0.,0.1], [0.1, 1000.]]

# Add to these the transit times:
params = params + ['T_p1_TESS_0','T_p1_TESS_1', 'T_p1_TESS_3', 'T_p1_TESS_4']
dists = dists + ['normal','normal','normal','normal']
hyperps = hyperps + [[1358.4,0.1],[1363.1,0.1], [1372.5,0.1], [1377.2,0.1]]


Note how we have defined transit-times only for $$n=0,1,3,4$$. We skipped the transit with $$n=2$$ as this one falls just where there is a gap in the data (which happens on every TESS sector to download the data back at Earth). We now put everything together into the priors dictionary, and re-fit the data:

# Build the prior dictionary with the above information:
priors = juliet.utils.generate_priors(params,dists,hyperps)

# Load and fit dataset with juliet:
dataset = juliet.load(priors=priors, t_lc = times, y_lc = fluxes, \
yerr_lc = fluxes_error, out_folder = 'hats46-ttvs')

results = dataset.fit()


The resulting fit looks as good as the original one shown in the Lightcurve fitting with juliet section:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Extract median model and the ones that cover the 68% credibility band around it:
transit_model = results.lc.evaluate('TESS')

# Plot data and best-fit model:
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(12,4))
plt.errorbar(dataset.times_lc['TESS'], dataset.data_lc['TESS'], \
yerr = dataset.errors_lc['TESS'], fmt = '.' , alpha = 0.1)
plt.plot(dataset.times_lc['TESS'], transit_model, color='black',zorder=10)

# Define labels, limits, etc. of the plot:
plt.xlim([np.min(dataset.times_lc['TESS']),np.max(dataset.times_lc['TESS'])])
plt.ylim([0.96,1.04])
plt.xlabel('Time (BJD - 2457000)')
plt.ylabel('Relative flux')


Let us, however, explore the posterior distribution of the parameters, which will enlighten us in understanding the constraints this puts on the HATS-46 b system. First of all, the posteriors.dat file for this fit shows the following summary statistics of the posterior distributions of the parameters:

# Parameter Name                 Median                  Upper 68 CI             Lower 68 CI
r1_p1                            0.5416863162            0.1568514219            0.1434447471
r2_p1                            0.1111807484            0.0034296154            0.0035118401
p_p1                             0.1111807484            0.0034296154            0.0035118401
b_p1                             0.3125294743            0.2352771328            0.2151671206
inc_p1                           88.9071308890           0.7710955693            1.0698162411
q1_TESS                          0.2692194780            0.3474123320            0.1815095451
q2_TESS                          0.3763637953            0.3601869056            0.2406970909
rho                              3681.1771806645         728.0596617015          1160.9706095575
mflux_TESS                       -0.0000894483           0.0000568777            0.0000560349
sigma_w_TESS                     4.4343278327            57.2232056206           4.1133207064
T_p1_TESS_0                      1358.3561072664         0.0018110928            0.0021025622
T_p1_TESS_1                      1363.1001349693         0.0020743972            0.0019741023
T_p1_TESS_3                      1372.5833491831         0.0017507552            0.0019396261
T_p1_TESS_4                      1377.3292128814         0.0016890000            0.0014434932
P_p1                             4.7429737505            0.0005494323            0.0005702781
a_p1                             16.3556306970           1.0182669217            1.9356637282
t0_p1                            1358.3562648736         0.0016147678            0.0016588470


First of all, note how juliet spits out not only the posterior distributions for the T parameters (i.e., the $$T(n)$$ in our notation above), but also for the corresponding slope (P_p1) and intercept (t0_p1) that best fits the transit times. These are actually pretty useful to plot the observed (i.e., the $$T(n)$$) minus the predicted (assuming the transits were exactly periodic, i.e., $$t0 + nP$$) variations from our data, which is actually what allows us to see what level (amplitude) of TTVs our data constrain. We can plot this so-called “O-C” plot as follows:

# To extract O-C data from the posterior distributions, first define some variables:
transit_numbers = np.array([0,1,3,4])
OC = np.zeros(len(transit_numbers))
OC_up_err = np.zeros(len(transit_numbers))
OC_down_err = np.zeros(len(transit_numbers))
instrument = 'TESS'
# Now go through known transit-numberings, and generate the O-C distributions. From there,
# compute the medians and 68% credibility bands:
for i in range(len(transit_numbers)):
transit_number = transit_numbers[i]
# Compute distribution of predicted times:
computed_time = results.posteriors['posterior_samples']['t0_p1'] + transit_number*results.posteriors['posterior_samples']['P_p1']
# Extract observed times:
observed_time = results.posteriors['posterior_samples']['T_p1_'+instrument+'_'+str(transit_number)]
# Generate O-C (multiply by 24*60 to get it in minutes) posterior distribution,
# and get quantiles from it:
val,vup,vdown = juliet.utils.get_quantiles((observed_time - computed_time)*24*60.)
# Save value and "1-sigma" errors:
OC[i], OC_up_err[i], OC_down_err[i] = val, vup-val,val-vdown

# Finally, generate plot with the O-C:
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(14,4))
plt.errorbar(transit_numbers,OC,yerr=[OC_down_err,OC_up_err],fmt='o',mfc='white',mec='cornflowerblue',ecolor='cornflowerblue',ms=10,elinewidth=1,zorder=3)
plt.plot([-0.1,4.1],[0.,0],'--',linewidth=1,color='black',zorder=2)
plt.xlim([-0.1,4.1])
plt.xlabel('Transit number')
plt.ylabel('O-C (minutes)')
plt.savefig('oc.png',transparent=True)


Beautiful! From this plot we can see that any possible TTV amplitudes are constrained to be below ~a couple of minutes if they exist within the observed time-frame of the HATS-46 b observations in this sector.

## Fitting for transit timing perturbations¶

Suppose a colleague of yours (or a referee) finds that transit number 3 above is “interesting”, as it is more than one sigma away from the dashed line (i.e., 1-sigma away from showing “no deviation from a perfectly periodic transit”). You answer back that, assuming the errors are more or less gaussian, having 1 out of 4 datapoints not matching at 1-sigma is expected. However, they are still intrigued: is there evidence in the data for that transit being special in terms of its transit timing? Could it be that a hint from TTVs showed up on that particular transit? Answering questions like this one is when fitting for the TTV perturbations defined above, the $$\delta t_n$$, becomes handy.

Let’s assume that all the other transits are periodic except for transit number 3. To fit for an extra perturbation in that transit, within juliet we use the dt_p1_instrument_n parameters — here, instrument defines the instrument where that transit occurs (e.g., TESS), n the transit epoch and, in this case, we are fitting the transit-time perturbation to planet p1. Again, juliet is able to handle different perturbations for different planets. In our case, then, we will be adding a parameter dt_p1_TESS_3, and will in addition be providing priors for the time-of-transit center (t0_p1) and period (P_p1) in the system, which will be in turn constrained by the other transits. To do this with juliet we would do the following. First, we set the usual priors (the same as the original fit done in the Lightcurve fitting with juliet section):

# Name of the parameters to be fit:
params = ['P_p1','t0_p1','r1_p1','r2_p1','q1_TESS','q2_TESS','ecc_p1','omega_p1',\
'rho', 'mdilution_TESS', 'mflux_TESS', 'sigma_w_TESS']

# Distributions:
dists = ['normal','normal','uniform','uniform','uniform','uniform','fixed','fixed',\
'loguniform', 'fixed', 'normal', 'loguniform']

# Hyperparameters
hyperps = [[4.7,0.1], [1358.4,0.1], [0.,1], [0.,1.], [0., 1.], [0., 1.], 0.0, 90.,\
[100., 10000.], 1.0, [0.,0.1], [0.1, 1000.]]

# Populate the priors dictionary:
for param, dist, hyperp in zip(params, dists, hyperps):
priors[param] = {}
priors[param]['distribution'], priors[param]['hyperparameters'] = dist, hyperp


However, we now add the perturbation to the third transit. We wrap up the priors dictionary and perform the fit:

params = params + ['dt_p1_TESS_3']
dists = dists + ['normal']
hyperps = hyperps + [[0.0,0.1]]

# Populate the priors dictionary:
priors = juliet.utils.generate_priors(params,dists,hyperps)

# Load and fit dataset with juliet:
dataset = juliet.load(priors=priors, t_lc = times, y_lc = fluxes, \
yerr_lc = fluxes_error, out_folder = 'hats46-ttvs-perturbations', verbose = True)

results = dataset.fit(n_live_points)


The resulting posterior on the timing perturbation looks as follows:

Is this convincing evidence for something special happening in transit 3? Luckily, juliet reports the bayesian evidence of this fit, which is $$\ln Z_{per} = 64199$$. The corresponding evidence for the fit done in the Lightcurve fitting with juliet section (with no perturbation) is $$\ln Z_{no-per} = 64202.1$$ — so a $$\Delta \ln Z = 3$$ in favour of no perturbation. The model without this timing perturbation is about 20 times more likely given the data at hand than the one with the perturbation. A pretty good bet against something special happening on transit number 3 for me (and probably you, your colleague and the referee!).

Note

The implementation discussed here was enormously beneffited by the discussions presented in the literature, both on the EXOFASTv2 paper (Section 18) and the discussion on the exoplanet package about their TTV implementation. We refer the users to these sources to learn more about this particular implementation of TTVs, and note that this is an approximation to the real dynamical problem that TTVs impose on transiting exoplanetary systems, as we are not considering changes to the other transit parameters. Photodynamical models are not yet supported within juliet.