Related papers: Improved Modeling of the Rossiter-McLaughlin Effec…
We have developed a new model for analysing light curves of planetary transits when there are starspots on the stellar disc. Because the parameter space contains a profusion of local minima we developed a new optimisation algorithm which…
Rapid planetary rotation can cause the equilibrium shape of a planet to be oblate. While planetary oblateness has mostly been probed by examining the subtle ingress and egress features in photometric transit light curves, we investigate the…
Stellar Doppler velocimetry determines a star's radial velocity $v_r$ via measurement of a redshift, $z$. At precisions below 10 m s$^{-1}$ conversion between the two quantities is complex, and care must be taken to properly account for the…
The Doppler method of exoplanet detection has been extremely successful, but suffers from contaminating noise from stellar activity. In this work a model of a rotating star with a magnetic field based on the geometry of the K2 star Epsilon…
In incorporating the effect of atmospheric turbulence in the broadening of spectral lines, the so-called radial-tangential macroturbulence (RTM) model has been widely used in the field of solar-type stars, which was devised from an…
First, we review the main physical effects to be considered in the building of evolutionary models of rotating stars on the Upper Main-Sequence (MS). The internal rotation law evolves as a result of contraction and expansion, meridional…
With an aim to examine how much information of solar rotation can be obtained purely spectroscopically by observing the sun-as-a-star during the 2012 May 21 eclipse at Okayama Astrophysical Observatory, we studied the variation of radial…
Seismic observations by the space-borne mission \emph{Kepler} have shown that the core of red giant stars slows down while evolving, requiring an efficient physical mechanism to extract angular momentum from the inner layers. Current…
When rotation is not taken into account, the measurement of the Gravitational Redshift can provide unique information about the compactness ($M/R$) of the star. Rotation alters the gravitational redshift rendering thereby a unique…
We present here a small anomalous radial velocity (RV) signal expected to be present in RV curves measured during planetary transits. This signal is induced by the convective blueshift (CB) effect --- a net blueshift emanating from the…
We analytically work out the long-term, i.e. averaged over one orbital revolution, time variations of some direct observable quantities Y induced by classical and general relativistic dynamical perturbations of the two-body pointlike…
In this PhD dissertation, I discuss issues of the Radial Velocities (RV) and transit methods. These techniques allow us to derive the mass and radius of an exoplanet, necessary to model its bulk structure and to have insight on its…
Context: A number of pulsating stars with rotational splittings have been observed thanks to the CoRoT and Kepler missions. This is particularly true of evolved (sub-giant and giant) stars, and has led various groups to investigate their…
We report photometric and radial velocity observations of the XO-4 transiting planetary system, conducted with the FLWO 1.2m telescope and the 8.2m Subaru Telescope. Based on the new light curves, the refined transit ephemeris of XO-4b is…
Transiting planet lightcurves have historically been used predominantly for measuring the depth and hence ratio of the planet-star radii, p. Equations have been previously presented by Seager & Mallen-Ornelas (2003) for the analysis of the…
Over the last decade significant amounts of high-spectral and time-resolution spectroscopic data have been acquired for a number of rapidly oscillating Ap stars. Progress in the understanding of the information held by these data requires…
A theoretical framework for emission originating from rapidly rotating oblate compact objects is described in detail. By using a Hamilton-Jacobi formalism, we show how the special relativistic rotational effects such as aberration of…
Precise measurements of a star's radial velocity (RV) made using extremely stable, high resolution, optical or near infrared spectrographs can be used to determine the masses and orbital parameters of gravitationally-bound extra-solar…
The currently favored method for estimating radii and other parameters of transiting-planet host stars is to match theoretical models to observations of the stellar mean density rho_*, the effective temperature T_eff, and the composition…
Aims: Stellar activity may complicate the analysis of high-precision radial-velocity spectroscopic data when looking for exoplanets signatures. We aim at quantifying the impact of stellar spots on stars with various spectral types and…