Detection of 27 Candidate Circumbinary Planets Through Apsidal Precession of Eclipsing Binaries Observed by TESS

Most circumbinary planets have been discovered by their transits, limiting our understanding of such systems to those with mutually coplanar architectures. This bias makes it difficult to infer the true circumbinary planet population, highlighting the need for alternative detection methods that do not rely on transits.

In this work, we explore one such approach by leveraging apsidal precession as a dynamical signature of planetary companions. We analyse TESS photometry of a sample of 1,590 eclipsing binaries from the Gaia DR3 Catalogue of Eclipsing Binary Candidates to identify systems exhibiting detectable apsidal precession.

We rule general relativistic, tidal, and rotational contributions as insufficient to account for the measured apsidal precession, demonstrating that an additional gravitational perturber is required. This enables us to constrain the possible masses and orbital separations of a companion that would cause the observed precession.

We present a new set of 27 candidate circumbinary planets identified through this precession-based method as well as 6 candidate companions with a higher minimum mass. Their inferred properties remain degenerate, as the same dynamical signatures can arise from lower-mass planets at less than 1 AU or from more massive companions on wider, few-AU orbits, reflecting the current uncertainty in characterising these systems. Radial velocities can help break this degeneracy and provide direct confirmation.

Margo Thornton, Benjamin T. Montet, Riley White, Arden Shao, Diya T. Kumar

Comments: 17 pages, 12 figures, submitted to MNRAS
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2512.07934 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2512.07934v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.07934
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Submission history
From: Margo Thornton
[v1] Mon, 8 Dec 2025 19:00:01 UTC (4,477 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07934
Astrobiology, Exoplanet,