THE POSSIBLE ORBITAL DECAY AND TRANSIT TIMING VARIATIONS OF THE PLANET WASP-43b

Motivated by the previously reported high orbital decay rate of the planet WASP-43b, we have obtained and present eight newly transiting light curves. Together with other data in the literature, we perform a self-consistent timing analysis with data covering a timescale of 1849 epochs. The results give an orbital decay rate = −0.02890795 ± 0.00772547 s year−1, which is one order smaller than previous values. This slow decay rate corresponds to a normally assumed theoretical value of the stellar tidal dissipation factor. In addition, through the frequency analysis, the transit timing variations presented here are unlikely to be periodic, but could be signals of a slow orbital decay.