Impact of magnetic field on radial velocity measurements
Résumé
Very low-mass stars are very promising targets for planet-search programs, in particular to discover super-Earths / Earths located in their habitable zone. Their detection is in principle accessible to the existing velocimeters of highest radial-velocity (RV) precision, but challenging due to activity ( i.e., dark spots and magnetic regions at their surfaces) which generate a noise level in RV curves (RV jitter). It can severely limit our practical ability at detecting Earth-like planets. To overcome this intrinsic limitation, a promising option consists in modeling directly the stellar activity behind the activity jitter, and in particular the magnetic field that gives rise to it. To do this, simultaneous observations in velocimetry (for activity jitter) and in spectropolarimetry (for the Zeeman signatures in spectral lines tracing the presence of a large-scale field) are needed. We present here our first results both on the simulations on the impact of magnetic fields on line profiles (bisectors & RV data), and on the simultaneous observations done thanks to HARPSPol@LaSilla and NARVAL@TBL/SOPHIE@OHP on a small sample.