Related papers: The statistics of multi-planet systems
The next generation of exoplanet space photometry missions proposed by both NASA and ESA promise to discover small transiting planets around the nearest and brightest main-sequence stars. The physical and rotational properties of these…
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…
I begin this review by first defining what is meant by exoplanet demographics, and then motivating why we would like as broad a picture of exoplanet demographics as possible. I then outline the methodology and pitfalls to measuring…
This paper introduces a new method of inferring the intrinsic exoplanet population from Kepler data, based on the assumption that the frequency of exoplanets can be represented by a smooth function of planet radius and period. The method is…
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered thousands of planetary systems, ~20% of which are found to host multiple transiting planets. This relative paucity (compared to the high fraction of single transiting systems) is postulated to result…
We investigate potential biases in the measurements of exoplanet orbital parameters obtained from radial velocity observations for single-planet systems. We create a mock catalog of radial velocity data, choosing input planet masses,…
A transiting planet eclipses part of the rotating stellar surface, thereby producing an anomalous Doppler shift of the stellar spectrum. Here I review how this "Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect" can be used to characterize exoplanetary systems.…
One possible diagnostic of planet formation, orbital migration, and tidal evolution is the angle psi between a planet's orbital axis and the spin axis of its parent star. In general, psi cannot be measured, but for transiting planets one…
The collection of planetary system properties derived from large surveys such as Kepler provides critical constraints on planet formation and evolution. These constraints can only be applied to planet formation models, however, if the…
We follow the microlensing approach and quantify the occurrence of Kepler exoplanets as a function of planet-to-star mass ratio, q, rather than planet radius or mass. For planets with radii ~1-6 R_earth and periods <100 days, we find that,…
Exoplanet occurrence rates facilitate comparisons between observations of planets and theoretical models of planet formation. Despite their deductive power, exoplanet occurrence rates for half the stars in the sky are missing because…
The hundreds of multiple planetary systems discovered by the \textit{Kepler} mission are typically observed to reside in close-in ($\lesssim0.5$ AU), low-eccentricity, and low-inclination orbits. We run N-body experiments to study the…
Context: Planets outside our solar system transiting their host star, i. e. those with an orbital inclination near 90 degree, are of special interest to derive physical properties of extrasolar planets. With the knowledge of the host star's…
We investigate the role that planet detection order plays in the Kepler planet detection pipeline. The Kepler pipeline typically detects planets in order of descending signal strength (MES). We find that the detectability of transits…
In the broadest sense, the primary goal of exoplanet demographic surveys is to determine the frequency and distribution of planets as a function of as many of the physical parameters that may influence planet formation and evolution as…
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…
The planet candidates discovered by the Kepler mission provide a rich sample to constrain the architectures and relative inclinations of planetary systems within approximately 0.5 AU of their host stars. We use the triple-transit systems…
Misalignments between planetary orbits and the equatorial planes of their host stars are clues about the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Earlier work found evidence for a peak near $90^\circ$ in the distribution of stellar…
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…
Almost half of the stellar systems in the solar neighborhood are made up of multiple stars. In multiple-star systems, planet formation is under the dynamical influence of stellar companions, and the planet occurrence rate is expected to be…