Expected Performance of the CoRoT Planet Search from Light Curve Beauty Contests

The CoRoT space mission, scheduled for launch in December 2006, has two primary science goals: asteroseismology and the detection of planetary transits, the latter being the subject of this contribution. Given its expected photometric performance and its 150 day observing window, CoRoT will detect planets with periods up to 75 days and radii down to 2 Earth radii. To prepare for the data analysis and evaluate the detection limits of the mission, a number of blind exercises to detect planets in simulated light curves have been carried out within the CoRoT exoplanet community, and their results to date are summarized here.