Related papers: Characterizing exoplanetary atmospheres through in…
Since the opacity of a magnetized plasma depends on polarization of radiation, the radiation emergent from atmospheres of neutron stars with strong magnetic fields is expected to be strongly polarized. The degree of linear polarization,…
The evolution of stars and planets is mostly controlled by the properties of their atmosphere. This is particularly true in the case of exoplanets close to their stars, for which one has to account both for an (often intense) irradiation…
We investigate spectra of airless rocky exoplanets with a theoretical framework that self-consistently treats reflection and thermal emission. We find that a silicate surface on an exoplanet is spectroscopically detectable via prominent…
The fine precision of photometric data available from missions like Kepler provide researchers with the ability to measure changes in light on the order of tens of parts per million (ppm). This level of precision allows researchers to…
We point out some advantages of making observations of extrasolar planets in linearly polarized (LP) light. Older cool stars have quite low levels (~ 10^-4 to 10^-5) of fractional LP, while extrasolar planets can have relatively high…
Numerical simulations of starlight that is reflected by Earth-like exoplanets predict habitability signatures that can be searched for with future telescopes. We explore signatures of water oceans in the flux and polarization spectra of…
Robust atmospheric and radiative transfer modeling will be required to properly interpret reflected light and thermal emission spectra of terrestrial exoplanets. This will help break observational degeneracies between the numerous…
It is the most appropriate time to characterize the Earth-like exoplanets in order to detect biosignature beyond the Earth because such exoplanets will be the prime targets of big-budget missions like JWST, Roman Space Telescope, HabEx,…
Clouds have an important role in the atmospheres of planetary bodies. It is expected that, like all the planetary bodies in our solar system, exoplanet atmospheres will also have substantial cloud coverage, and evidence is mounting for…
Thermal and non-thermal radiation from pulsars carries significant information from surface and would have profound implications on the state of dense matter in compact stars. For the non-thermal radio emission, subpulse drifting phenomena…
Many active stars are covered in spots, much more so than the Sun, as indicated by spectroscopic and photometric observations. It has been predicted that star spots induce non-zero intrinsic linear polarization by breaking the visible…
New observational facilities are beginning to enable insights into the three-dimensional (3D) nature of exoplanets. Transmission spectroscopy is the most widely used method for characterizing transiting temperate exoplanet's atmospheres,…
With the increasing number of directly imaged giant exoplanets the current atmosphere models are often not capable of fully explaining the spectra and luminosity of the sources. A particularly challenging component of the atmosphere models…
Energetic X-ray radiations emitted from various accretion systems are widely considered to be produced by Comptonization in the hot corona. The corona and its interaction with the disc play an essential role in the evolution of the system…
Planets with non-zero obliquity and/or orbital eccentricity experience seasonal variations of stellar irradiation at local latitudes. The extent of the atmospheric response can be crudely estimated by the ratio between the orbital timescale…
We identify a previously overlooked invariant governing planetary surface temperatures, expressed in terms of only two observables: solar irradiance and Bond albedo. The relation has universal applicability and accurately reproduces the…
We present a multiple scattering vector radiative transfer model which produces disk integrated, full phase polarized light curves for reflected light from an exoplanetary atmosphere. We validate our model against results from published…
Polarimetry is one of the keys to enhanced direct imaging of exoplanets. Not only does it deliver a differential observable providing extra contrast, but when coupled with spectroscopy, it also reveals valuable information on the…
The atmospheres of planets (including Earth) and the outer layers of stars have often been treated in radiative transfer as plane-parallel media, instead of spherical shells, which can lead to inaccuracy, e.g. limb darkening. We give an…
Exoplanet transmission spectra, which measure the absorption of light passing through a planet's atmosphere during transit, are most often assessed globally, resulting in a single spectrum per planetary atmosphere. However, the inherent…