Peekaboo: Secular Resonances from Evolving Stellar Oblateness Impede Transit Detections

Abstract Secular resonances in exoplanet systems occur when two or more planets have commensurabilities in the precession rates of their orbital elements, causing an exchange of angular momentum between them. The stellar gravitational quadrupole moment, which evolves over time due to stellar spin-down over the first ∼100 Myr, causes these resonances to sweep through the parameter space (of masses and semimajor-axis ratios), affecting a wider variety of systems than when spin-down is neglected. The angular momentum exchange in these resonances typically aligns the outer planets’ orbits together while misaligning the innermost planet from its companions. Here, we explore how resonance-induced (mis)alignments between planets affect the transit outcome. We use the three-planet Kepler-619 system as a concrete case study that is relatively likely (approximately 1:1 odds) to have undergone a sweeping resonance. Consequently, if the outer planets are initially misaligned, a sweeping-resonance-induced push toward alignment in the outer planets’ orbits substantially increases the probability that they are observed transiting together. However, the resulting misalignment of the innermost planet from its outer companions reduces the overall probability that Kepler-619 is observed as a multiplanet transiting system when considering any pair of planets or all three together. This implies that sweeping resonances (which may occur in 20% of systems) have a deleterious effect on the transiting exoplanet sample, suppressing the detection of multiplanet transiting systems in favor of apparent single-planet systems.