A spectral approach to transit timing variations

The usual procedure for detecting these TTVs is biased to long-period, deep transit planets, whereas most transiting planets have short periods and shallow transits. Here we introduce the Spectral Approach technique to TTVs that allows expanding the TTV catalog toward lower TTV amplitude, shorter orbital period, and shallower transit depth.

In the spectral approach, we assume that a sinusoidal TTV exists in the data and then calculate the improvement to {chi}^2^ that this model allows over that of the linear-ephemeris model. This enables detection of TTVs even in cases where the transits are too shallow, so that individual transits cannot be timed. The spectral approach is more sensitive because it has fewer free parameters in its model.