Related papers: Kepler planet candidates consistent with core accr…

Several circumbinary planets have been detected by the Kepler mission. Recent work has emphasized the difficulty of forming these planets at their observed locations. It has been suggested that these planets formed further out in their…

New transiting planet candidates are identified in sixteen months (May 2009 - September 2010) of data from the Kepler spacecraft. Nearly five thousand periodic transit-like signals are vetted against astrophysical and instrumental false…

We present a study of the relative sizes of planets within the multiple candidate systems discovered with the $Kepler$ mission. We have compared the size of each planet to the size of every other planet within a given planetary system after…

We compare the planet-to-star mass-ratio distribution measured by gravitational microlensing to core accretion theory predictions from population synthesis models. The core accretion theory's runaway gas accretion process predicts a dearth…

We present accretion rates obtained from three-dimensional self-gravitating radiation hydrodynamical models of giant planet growth. We investigate the dependence of accretion rates upon grain opacity and core/protoplanet mass. The accretion…

We analyze the distribution of extrasolar planets (both confirmed and Kepler candidates) according to their orbital periods P and planetary radii R. Among confirmed planets, we find compelling evidence for a paucity of bodies with 3 < R <…

The eccentricity distribution of exoplanets is known from radial velocity surveys to be divergent from circular orbits beyond 0.1 AU. This is particularly the case for large planets where the radial velocity technique is most sensitive. The…

The Kepler mission has discovered over 2500 exoplanet candidates in the first two years of spacecraft data, with approximately 40% of them in candidate multi-planet systems. The high rate of multiplicity combined with the low rate of…

We develop a general method to fit the planetary distribution function (PLDF) to exoplanet survey data. This maximum likelihood method accommodates more than one planet per star and any number of planet or target star properties.…

We examine the accretion of cores of giant planets from planetesimals, gas accretion onto the cores, and their orbital migration. We adopt a working model for nascent protostellar disks with a wide variety of surface density distributions…

In the spring of 2009, the Kepler Mission commenced high-precision photometry on nearly 156,000 stars to determine the frequency and characteristics of small exoplanets, conduct a guest observer program, and obtain asteroseismic data on a…

We investigate observations of circumbinary disks (CBD), to find evidence for an equilibrium eccentricity predicted by current binary accretion theory. Although stellar binary demographics in the Milky Way show no evidence for a preferred…

We discuss prospects for asteroseismic inference on solar-type stars, in particular opportunities that are being made possible by the large ensemble of exquisite-quality Kepler data.

In this letter we present an overview of the rich population of systems with multiple candidate transiting planets found in the first four months of Kepler data. The census of multiples includes 115 targets that show 2 candidate planets, 45…

We examine the formation of planets around binary stars in light of the recently discovered systems Kepler 16, 34 and 35. We conduct hydrodynamical simulations of self gravitating disks around binary systems. The selected binary and disk…

We provide updates to the Kepler planet candidate sample based upon nearly two years of high-precision photometry (i.e., Q1-Q8). From an initial list of nearly 13,400 Threshold Crossing Events (TCEs), 480 new host stars are identified from…

Numerous circumbinary planets have been discovered in surveys of transiting planets. Often, these planets are found to orbit near to the zone of dynamical instability, close to the central binary. The existence of these planets has been…

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 a method to confirm the planetary nature of objects in systems with multiple transiting exoplanet candidates. This method involves a Fourier-Domain analysis of the deviations in the transit times from a constant period that…

This paper outlines a simple approach to evaluate habitability of terrestrial planets by assuming different types of planetary atmospheres and using corresponding model calculations. Our approach can be applied for current and future…