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Identification of the Top TESS Objects of Interest for Atmospheric Characterization of Transiting Exoplanets with JWST Published: 8/18/2023 6:20:39 PM Updated: 8/18/2023 6:20:39 PM

Paper abstract: JWST has ushered in an era of unprecedented ability to characterizeexoplanetary atmospheres. While there are over 5,000 confirmed planets, morethan 4,000 TESS planet candidates are still unconfirmed and many of the bestplanets for atmospheric characterization may remain to be identified. Wepresent a sample of TESS planets and planet candidates that we identify as"best-in-class" for transmission and emission spectroscopy with JWST. Thesetargets are sorted into bins across equilibrium temperature T_{\mathrm{eq}}and planetary radius R{_\mathrm{p}} and are ranked by transmission andemission spectroscopy metric (TSM and ESM, respectively) within each bin. Informing our target sample, we perform cuts for expected signal size and stellarbrightness, to remove sub-optimal targets for JWST. Of the 194 targets in theresulting sample, 103 are unconfirmed TESS planet candidates, also known asTESS Objects of Interest (TOIs). We perform vetting and statistical validationanalyses on these 103 targets to determine which are likely planets and whichare likely false positives, incorporating ground-based follow-up from the TESSFollow-up Observation Program (TFOP) to aid the vetting and validation process.We statistically validate 23 TOIs, marginally validate 33 TOIs to varyinglevels of confidence, deem 29 TOIs likely false positives, and leave thedispositions for 4 TOIs as inconclusive. 14 of the 103 TOIs were confirmedindependently over the course of our analysis. We provide our finalbest-in-class sample as a community resource for future JWST proposals andobservations. We intend for this work to motivate formal confirmation and massmeasurements of each validated planet and encourage more detailed analysis ofindividual targets by the community.