A PSF-based Approach to TESS High quality data of Stellar clusters (PATHOS) – III. Exploring the properties of young associations through their variables, dippers, and candidate exoplanets

Young associations in star-forming regions are stellar systems that allow us to understand the mechanisms that characterize the stars in their early life and what happens around them. In particular, the analysis of the discs and of the exoplanets around young stars allows us to know the key processes that prevail in their evolution and understand the properties of the exoplanets orbiting older stars. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission is giving us the opportunity to extract and analyse the light curves of association members with high accuracy, but the crowding that affects these regions makes difficult the light curve extraction. In the PATHOS project, cutting-edge tools are used to extract high-precision light curves and identify variable stars and transiting exoplanets in open clusters and associations. In this work, I analysed the light curves of stars in five young (<10 Myr) associations, searching for variables and candidate exoplanets. Using the rotational periods of the association members, I constrained the ages of the five stellar systems (∼2–10 Myr). I searched for dippers, and I investigated the properties of the dust that forms the circumstellar discs. Finally, I searched for transiting signals, finding six strong candidate exoplanets. No candidates with radius RP < 0.9 RJ have been detected, in agreement with the expectations. The frequency of giant planets resulted to be ∼2–3 per cent, higher than that expected for field stars (< 1 per cent); the low statistic makes this conclusion not strong, and new investigations on young objects are mandatory to confirm this result.