Rotation periods in TESS objects of interest (TOIs)

The high-quality light curves from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) represent a unique laboratory for the study of stellar rotation, which is a fundamental observable driving stellar and planetary evolution, including planetary atmospheres and impacting habitability conditions and the genesis of life around stars. As of 2020 April 14, this mission delivered public light curves for 1000 TESS objects of interest (TOIs), observed with a 2 minute cadence during the first 20 months of the mission.

Here, we present a search for rotation signatures in these TOIs, using fast Fourier transform, Lomb-Scargle, and wavelet techniques, accompanied by a rigorous visual inspection. This effort revealed 163 targets with rotation signatures, 131 of which present unambiguous rotation periods ranging from 0.321 and 13.219 days, whereas 32 of them present dubious rotation periodicities. Of these stars, 109 show flux fluctuations whose root cause is not clearly identified.