A Keck HIRES Doppler Search for Planets Orbiting Metal-Poor Dwarfs. I. Testing Giant Planet Formation and Migration Scenarios

We describe a high-precision Doppler search for giant planets orbiting a well-defined sample of metal-poor dwarfs in the field. This experiment constitutes a fundamental test of theoretical predictions, which will help discriminate between proposed giant planet formation and migration models. We present details of the survey, as well as an overall assessment of the quality of our measurements, making use of the results for stars that show no significant velocity variation.