title: A Population of planetary systems characterized by short-period, Earth-sized planets.
abstract: We analyze data from the Quarter 1-17 Data Release 24 (Q1-Q17 DR24) planet candidate catalog from NASA's Kepler mission, specifically comparing systems with single transiting planets to systems with multiple transiting planets, and identify a population of exoplanets with a necessarily distinct system architecture. Such an architecture likely indicates a different branch in their evolutionary past relative to the typical Kepler system. The key feature of these planetary systems is an isolated, Earth-sized planet with a roughly 1-d orbital period. We estimate that at least 24 of the 144 systems we examined ([Formula: see text]17%) are members of this population. Accounting for detection efficiency, such planetary systems occur with a frequency similar to the hot Jupiters.
authors: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154-4002; jason.steffen@unlv.edu.
authors: Jason H
authors: JH
authors: Steffen
authors: SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043; NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035.
authors: Jeffrey L
authors: JL
authors: Coughlin
keywords: Kepler; exoplanets; planetary systems