Related papers: The Exoplanet Eccentricity Distribution from Keple…
Warm giant planets with orbital periods of tens of days exhibit a positive correlation between mass and eccentricity. We interpret this trend as the outcome of planet-planet scattering, representing a transition from collision-dominated…
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.…
Important clues on the formation and evolution of planetary systems can be inferred from the stellar obliquity $\psi$. We study the distribution of obliquities using the California-Kepler Survey and the TEPCat Catalog of…
We study the orbital properties of stars in four (published) simulations of thick disks formed by: i) accretion from disrupted satellites, ii) heating of a pre-existing thin disk by a minor merger, iii) radial migration and iv) gas rich…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information regarding the internal structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the low-periastron distance regime due to the bias…
Many multiple-planet systems have been found by the Kepler transit survey and various radial velocity (RV) surveys. Kepler planets show an asymmetric feature, namely, there are small but significant deficits/excesses of planet pairs with…
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 conducted a search for very short-period transiting objects in the publicly available Kepler dataset. Our preliminary survey has revealed four planetary candidates, all with orbital periods less than twelve hours. We have analyzed the…
We analyze the observed distribution of the orbital eccentricity and period of binary radio pulsars in globular clusters using computational tools to simulate binary-single star interactions. Globular clusters have different groups of…
Statistical studies of exoplanets and the properties of their host stars have been critical to informing models of planet formation. Numerous trends have arisen in particular from the rich Kepler dataset, including that exoplanets are more…
When we are fortunate enough to view an exoplanetary system nearly edge-on, the star and planet periodically eclipse each other. Observations of eclipses (transits and occultations) provide a bonanza of information that cannot be obtained…
Exoplanet habitability is traditionally assessed by comparing a planet's semi-major axis to the location of its host star's "habitable zone," the shell around a star for which Earth-like planets can possess liquid surface water. The Kepler…
Models are developed to simulate lightcurves of stars dimmed by transiting exoplanets with and without rings. These models are then applied to \textit{Kepler} photometry to search for planetary rings in a sample of 21 exoplanets, mostly hot…
Population studies of Kepler's multi-planet systems have revealed a surprising degree of structure in their underlying architectures. Information from a detected transiting planet can be combined with a population model to make predictions…
We present a preliminary analysis of the sensitivity of Anglo-Australian Planet Search data to the orbital parameters of extrasolar planets. To do so, we have developed new tools for the automatic analysis of large-scale simulations of…
NASA's Kepler mission revealed that $\sim 30\%$ of Solar-type stars harbor planets with sizes between that of Earth and Neptune on nearly circular and co-planar orbits with periods less than 100 days. Such short-period compact systems are…
In the last few years, significant advances have been made in understanding the distributions of exoplanet populations and the architecture of planetary systems. We review the recent progress of planet statistics, with a focus on the inner…
Photometric survey data from the Kepler mission have been used to discover and characterize thousands of transiting exoplanet and eclipsing binary (EB) systems. These discoveries have enabled empirical studies of occurrence rates which…
We extract densities and eccentricities of 139 sub-Jovian planets by analyzing transit time variations (TTVs) obtained by the Kepler mission through Quarter 12. We partially circumvent the degeneracies that plague TTV inversion with the…
The size distribution and total mass of objects in the Oort Cloud have important implications to the theory of planets formation, including the properties of, and the processes taking place in the early solar system. We discuss the…