Related papers: Multi-ring structure of the eclipsing disk in EE C…
Theoretical formation models and exoplanet detection surveys indicate that systems with multiple giant planets are common. We investigate how multiple super-thermal mass planets embedded in a circumstellar disk shape the dust distribution…
Recent discoveries of extrasolar planets at small orbital radii, or with significant eccentricities, indicate that interactions between massive planets and the disks of gas and dust from which they formed are vital for determining the final…
Wide-field photometric transit surveys for Jupiter-sized planets are inundated by astrophysical false positives, namely systems that contain an eclipsing binary and mimic the desired photometric signature. We discuss several examples of…
NASA's Kepler mission discovered $\sim700$ planets in multi-planet systems containing 3 or more transiting bodies, many of which are super-Earths and mini-Neptunes in compact configurations. Using $N$-body simulations, we examine the in…
We present the discovery of a planet on a very wide orbit in the microlensing event OGLE-2012-BLG-0838. The signal of the planet is well separated from the main peak of the event and the planet-star projected separation is found to be twice…
The discovery of Earth-like planets is a major focus of current planetology research and faces a significant technological challenge. Indeed, when it comes to detecting planets as small and cold as the Earth, the cost of observation time is…
The field of exoplanetary science has experienced a recent surge of new systems that is largely due to the precision photometry provided by the Kepler mission. The latest discoveries have included compact planetary systems in which the…
We use archived IRAC images from the Spitzer Space Telescope to show that many Class 0 protostars exhibit complex, irregular, and non-axisymmetric structure within their dusty envelopes. Our 8 $\mu$m extinction maps probe some of the…
We review three main results of our recent study: We show that a proper treatment of the tidal interaction prior to the onset of the common envelope (CE) leads to an enhance mass loss. This might increase the survivability of planets and…
The known extrasolar planets exhibit many interesting and surprising features--extremely short-period orbits, high-eccentricity orbits, mean-motion and secular resonances, etc.--and have dramatically expanded our appreciation of the…
The compact multi-transiting systems discovered by Kepler challenge traditional planet formation theories. These fall into two broad classes: (1) formation further out followed by migration; (2) formation in situ from a disk of gas and…
Due to the exquisite photometric precision, transiting exoplanet discoveries from the Kepler mission are enabling several new techniques of confirmation and characterization. One of these newly accessible techniques analyzes the phase…
We report high-resolution 1.6 $\micron$ polarized intensity ($PI$) images of the circumstellar disk around the Herbig Ae star AB Aur at a radial distance of 22 AU ($0."15$) up to 554 AU (3.$"$85), which have been obtained by the…
The host stars of extrasolar planets tend to be metal-rich. We have examined the data for these stars for evidence of trends in other galactic parameters, without success. However, several ESP hosts are likely to be members of the thick…
Gravitational scattering between massive planets has been invoked to explain the eccentricity distribution of extrasolar planets. For scattering to occur, the planets must either form in -- or migrate into -- an unstable configuration. In…
More than 100 extrasolar planets have been discovered since 1990s. Different from the solar system, these planets' orbital eccentricities cover a huge range from 0 to 0.7. Incidently, the first Kuiper Belt Object was discovered in 1992.…
With the increasing number of detected exoplanet samples, the statistical properties of planetary systems have become much clearer. In this review, we summarize the major statistics that have been revealed mainly by radial velocity and…
B[e] Supergiants are luminous evolved massive stars. The mass-loss during this phase creates a complex circumstellar environment with atomic, molecular, and dusty regions usually found in rings or disk-like structures. For a better…
One of the most mysterious astrophysical states is the common envelope (CE) phase of binary evolution, in which two stars are enshrouded by the envelope shed by one of them. Interactions between the stars and the envelope shrinks the orbit.…
We investigate the improved detection of extrasolar planets around eclipsing binaries using eclipse minima timing, and extrasolar moons around transiting planets using transit timing, offered by the upcoming COROT (ESA, 2005), Kepler (NASA,…