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arXiv · 2609.37517

The Occurrence Rate of Planets Around Subgiant Stars from TESS Photometric Survey

Abstract

Subgiant stars represent a critical phase in stellar evolution, offering an opportunity to investigate how planetary systems respond to the early stages of post-main-sequence expansion. Despite their importance, systematic occurrence-rate studies of this population remain sparse compared with those of main-sequence and red-giant hosts. In this work, we present a uniform analysis of planet occurrence around a sample of 282,904 subgiant stars selected from the Gaia DR3 catalogue. We perform an independent reanalysis of TESS light curves for transit-signal detection and refinement, followed by multi-stage vetting including visual inspection and statistical false-positive assessment. We quantify the detection sensitivity of the survey through injection-and-recovery experiments, with 565,808 synthetic transit signals injected across the stellar sample. Over the period range of 1--10 days and the planet-radius range for which the detection completeness is well characterised, we measure a completeness-corrected planet occurrence rate of 0.644^{+0.048}_{-0.041}. The occurrence rate is strongly dependent on planet radius, with the highest occurrence contributed by planets in the 1-4 R_earth range and a secondary enhancement at 12-15 R_earth. These results provide a demographic baseline for studying the population of close-in planets around stars undergoing early post-main-sequence evolution.

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BibTeXRIS

Arkaprova Dutta, Priyanka Chaturvedi. 2026-09-29. The Occurrence Rate of Planets Around Subgiant Stars from TESS Photometric Survey. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.37517

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