GJ 4276 - Eccentric planet or 2:1 resonance?

The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs - The enigmatic planetary system GJ 4276: One eccentric planet or two planets in a 2:1 resonance?
https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.02367

Quote :

We report the detection of a Neptune-mass exoplanet around the M4.0 dwarf GJ 4276 (G 232-070) based on radial velocity (RV) observations obtained with the CARMENES spectrograph. The RV variations of GJ 4276 are best explained by the presence of a planetary companion that has a minimum mass of mbsini≈16M⊕ on a Pb=13.35 day orbit. The analysis of the activity indicators and spectral diagnostics exclude stellar induced RV perturbations and prove the planetary interpretation of the RV signal. We show that a circular single-planet solution can be excluded by means of a likelihood ratio test. Instead, we find that the RV variations can be explained either by an eccentric orbit or interpreted as a pair of planets on circular orbits near a period ratio of 2:1. Although the eccentric single-planet solution is slightly preferred, our statistical analysis indicates that none of these two scenarios can be rejected with high confidence using the RV time series obtained so far. Based on the eccentric interpretation, we find that GJ 4276 b is the most eccentric (eb=0.37) exoplanet around an M dwarf with such a short orbital period known today.

Dynamical Interactions in the Planetary System GJ4276
https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.04059

Quote :

GJ4276 is an M4.0 dwarf star with an inferred Neptune mass planet from radial velocity (RV) observations. We reanalyse the RV data for this system and focus on the possibility of a second, super earth mass, planet. We compute the timescale for fast resonant librations in the eccentricity to be ∼2000days. Given that the observations were taken over 700days, we expect to see the effect of these librations in the observations. We perform a fully dynamical fit to test this hypothesis. Similar to previous results, we determine that the data could be fit by two planets in a 2:1 mean motion resonance. However, we also find solutions near the 5:4 mean motion resonance which are not present when planet-planet interactions are ignored. Using the MEGNO indicator, we analyze the stability of the system and find that our solutions lie in a stable region of parameter space. We also find that though out of resonance solutions are possible, the system favours a configuration which is in a first order mean motion resonance. The existence of mean motion resonances has important implications in many planet formation theories. Although we do not attempt to distinguish between the one and two planet models in this work, in either case, the predicted orbital parameters are interesting enough to merit further study. Future observations should be able to distinguish between the different scenarios within the next 5years.