  The ubiquity of M dwarf stars combined with their low masses and luminosities
make them prime targets in the search for nearby, habitable exoplanets. We
investigate the effects of starspot-induced radial velocity (RV) jitter on
detection and characterization of planets orbiting M dwarfs. We create surface
spot configurations with both random spot coverage and active regions.
Synthetic stellar spectra are calculated from a given spot map, and RV
measurements are obtained using cross-correlation technique. We add the RV
signal of an orbiting planet to these jitter measurements, and reduce the data
to "measure" the planetary parameters. We investigate the detectability of
planets around M dwarfs of different activity levels, and the recovery of input
planetary parameters. When studying the recovery of the planetary period we
note that while our original orbital radius places the planet inside the HZ of
its star, even at a filling factor of 2% a few of our measurements fall outside
the "conservative Habitable Zone". Higher spot filling factors result in more
and higher deviations. Our investigations suggest that caution should be used
when characterizing planets discovered with the RV method around stars that are
(or are potentially) active.
