Abstract

The presence of giant planets interior to the ice lines of Sun-like stars indicates that inward orbital migration is likely a common phenomenon. However, the processes by which these gas giants arrived at their present-day locations are poorly constrained because radial velocity and transit surveys have largely avoided young stars. As a result, our knowledge of giant planet statistics is largely confined to old ages (~1-10 Gyr) after most migration has terminated. This second year research project aims to improve our understanding of how and when giant planets migrate to small separations. In 2018 we launched a precise RV survey of 119 intermediate-age (~50-250 Myr) GK dwarfs with the Habitable Zone Planet Finder spectrograph (HPF) at McDonald Observatory's Hobby Eberly Telescope to determine the timescale and dominant physical mechanism of giant planet migration. This report summarizes results from the first 14 months of this program, with a focus on our custom RV pipeline for HPF, a measurement of intrinsic near-infrared RV activity in young Solar analogs, and modeling the underlying distribution of stellar jitter. We demonstrate on-sky stability at the sub-2 m/s level for the K2 standard HD 3765 using a least-squares matching method to extract precise RVs. Based on a subsample of 28 stars with at least three RV measurements from our program, we find a median RMS level of 36 m/s. This is nearly a factor of 2 lower than the median RMS level in the optical (60 m/s) for a comparison sample with similar ages and spectral types as our targets. Observing in the NIR can facilitate the search for planets around young, active stars.