Kepler pipeline transit signal recovery. III.

Here we present measurements of the sensitivity of the pipeline (version 9.2) used to generate the Q1-Q17 DR24 planet candidate catalog. We measure this by injecting simulated transiting planets into the pixel-level data of 159013 targets across the entire Kepler focal plane, and examining the recovery rate.

Unlike previous versions of the Kepler pipeline, we find a strong period dependence in the measured detection efficiency, with longer (>40 day) periods having a significantly lower detectability than shorter periods, introduced in part by an incorrectly implemented veto. Consequently, the sensitivity of the 9.2 pipeline cannot be cast as a simple one-dimensional function of the signal strength of the candidate planet signal, as was possible for previous versions of the pipeline.