Related papers: Characterizing exoplanetary atmospheres through in…
Polarized dust emission outside of disks reveal the magnetic field morphology of molecular clouds. Within disks, however, polarized dust emission can arise from very different mechanisms (e.g., self-scattering), and each of them are useful…
Specularly reflected light, or glint, from an ocean surface may provide a useful observational tool for studying extrasolar terrestrial planets. Detection of sea-surface glints would differentiate ocean-bearing terrestrial planets, i.e.…
With the recent discoveries of hundreds of extrasolar planets, the search for planets like Earth and life in the universe, is quickly gaining momentum. In the future, large space observatories could directly detect the light scattered from…
From estimates of the near-surface heat capacity of planets it is shown that the thermal time scale is larger than the orbital period in the presence of a global ocean that is well-mixed to a depth of 100 m, or of an atmosphere with a…
The bolometric radiation from a central body is potentially a powerful driver of atmospheric escape from planets or satellites. When heated above their equilibrium temperatures those satellites, due to their low surface gravity, are be…
Rings around giant exoplanets (hereafter 'exorings') are still a missing planetary phenomenon among the vast number of discovered planets. Despite the fact there exist a large number of methods for identifying and characterizing these…
The next generation of high-contrast imaging instruments will provide the first unresolved image of an extrasolar planet. While the emitted infrared light from the planet in thermal equilibrium should show almost no phase effect, the…
We present a coupled 3-D atmospheric dynamics and radiative transfer model to predict the disk-integrated thermal emission spectra of transiting exoplanets in edge-on orbits. We calculate spectra at high resolution to examine the extent to…
We examine changes in the molecular abundances resulting from increased heating due to a self-luminous planetary companion embedded within a narrow circumstellar disk gap. Using 3D models that include stellar and planetary irradiation, we…
Exoplanets on eccentric orbits experience an incident stellar flux that can be markedly larger at periastron versus apoastron. This variation in instellation can lead to dramatic changes in atmospheric structure in regions of the atmosphere…
Polarimetric measurements, especially if extended at high energy, are expected to provide important insights into the mechanisms underlying the acceleration of relativistic particles in jets. In a previous work we have shown that the…
Linearly polarized emission is described, in general, in terms of the Stokes parameters $Q$ and $U$, from which the polarization intensity and polarization angle can be determined. Although the polarization intensity and polarization angle…
The surfaces of neutron stars are sources of strongly polarized soft X rays due to the presence of strong magnetic fields. Radiative transfer mediated by electron scattering and free-free absorption is central to defining local surface…
The study of polarized radiation transfer in the highly-magnetized surface locales of neutron stars is of great interest to the understanding of accreting X-ray pulsars, rotation-powered pulsars and magnetars. This paper explores scattering…
Recently discovered exoplanets on close-in orbits should have surface temperatures of 100's to 1000's of K. They are likely tidally locked and synchronously rotating around their parent stars and, if an atmosphere is absent, have surface…
We study the impact of gas motions on the polarization of bright X-ray emission lines from the hot intercluster medium (ICM). The polarization naturally arises from resonant scattering of emission lines owing to a quadrupole component in…
While there have been multiple observational programs aimed at detecting linear polarization of optical radiation emitted by ultracool dwarfs, there has been comparatively less rigorous theoretical analysis of the problem. The general…
The upper atmospheres of Mars and Titan, as well as those on many other planetary bodies, exhibit significant density variations vs. altitude that are interpreted as gravity waves. Such data is then used to extract vertical temperature…
Detecting and characterizing the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets has proven to be challenging for JWST. Transit spectroscopy of the TRAPPIST-1 planets has been impacted by the effects of spots and faculae on the host star. Secondary…
We report results of a theoretical investigation of polarization of the X-ray emissions induced in charge-exchange collisions of fully stripped solar wind ions C$^{6+}$ and O$^{8+}$ with the heliospheric hydrogen atoms. The polarization of…