Related papers: Detectability of Terrestrial Planets in Multi-Plan…
In the coming decades, research in extrasolar planets aims to advance two goals: 1) detecting and characterizing low-mass planets increasingly similar to the Earth, and 2) improving our understanding of planet formation. We present a new…
With more than 260 extrasolar planetary systems discovered to-date, the search for habitable planets has found new grounds. Unlike our solar system, the stars of many of these planets are hosts to eccentric or close-in giant bodies. Several…
Multi-planet systems produce a wealth of information for exoplanet science, but our understanding of planetary architectures is incomplete. Probing these systems further will provide insight into orbital architectures and formation…
The study of planets beyond the solar system and the search for other habitable planets and life is just beginning. Ground-based (radial velocity and transits) and space-based surveys (transits and astrometry) will identify planets spanning…
To date, two planetary systems have been discovered with close-in, terrestrial-mass planets (< 5-10 Earth masses). Many more such discoveries are anticipated in the coming years with radial velocity and transit searches. Here we investigate…
We introduce a new method of searching for and characterizing extra-solar planets. We show that by monitoring the center-of-light motion of microlensing alerts using the next generation of high precision astrometric instruments the…
The widespread prevalence of close-in, nearly coplanar super-Earth- and sub-Neptune-sized planets in multiple-planet systems was one of the most surprising results from the Kepler mission. By studying a uniform sample of Kepler "multis"…
Motivated by recent measurements of the free-floating planet mass function at terrestrial masses, we consider the possibility that the solar system may have captured a terrestrial planet early in its history. We show that $\sim 1.2$…
The probability of the detection of Earth-like exoplanets may increase in the near future after the launch of the space missions using the transit photometry as observation method. By using this technique only the semi-major axis of the…
The search for extrasolar Earth-like planets is underway. Over 100 extrasolar giant planets are known to orbit nearby sun-like stars, including several in multiple-planet systems. These planetary systems are stepping stones for the search…
The detection of thousands of extrasolar planets by the transit method naturally raises the question of whether potential extrasolar observers could detect the transits of the Solar System planets. We present a comprehensive analysis of the…
The holy grail of exoplanet searches is an exo-Earth, an Earth mass planet in the habitable zone around a nearby star. Mass is the most important parameter of a planet and can only be measured by observing the motion of the star around the…
Roughly half of Solar-type planet hosts have stellar companions, so understanding how these binary companions affect the formation and evolution of planets is an important component to understanding planetary systems overall. Measuring the…
The physical bases of the detection and characterisation of extrasolar planets in the reflected light and thermal emission regimes are reviewed. They both have their advantages and disadvantages, including artefacts, in the determination of…
Many ground-based photometric surveys are now under way, and five of them have been successful at detecting transiting exoplanets. Nevertheless, detecting transiting planets has turned out to be much more challenging than initially…
With planets orbiting stars, a planetary mass function should not be seen as a low-mass extension of the stellar mass function, but a proper formalism needs to take care of the fact that the statistical properties of planet populations are…
Microlensing is one of the most powerful methods that can detect extrasolar planets and a future space-based survey with a high monitoring frequency is proposed to detect a large sample of Earth-mass planets. In this paper, we examine the…
Whether binaries can harbor potentially habitable planets depends on several factors including the physical properties and the orbital characteristics of the binary system. While the former determines the location of the habitable zone…
Microlensing is potentially sensitive to multiple-planet systems containing analogs of all the solar system planets except Mercury, as well as to free floating planets. I review the landscape of microlensing planet searches, beginning with…
Directly imaging extrasolar planets using a monolithic optical telescope avoids many pitfalls of space interferometry and opens up the prospect of visible light studies of extrasolar planetary systems. Future astronomical missions may…