Related papers: Kepler planets: a tale of evaporation
In 2013 a dearth of close-in planets around fast-rotating host stars was found using statistical tests on Kepler data. The addition of more Kepler and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) systems in 2022 filled this region of the…
Trends in the planet population with host star mass provide an avenue to constrain planet formation theories. We derive the planet radius distribution function for Kepler stars of different spectral types, sampling a range in host star…
Short-period exoplanets potentially lose envelope masses during their evolution because of atmospheric escape caused by the intense XUV radiation from their host stars. We develop a combined model of atmospheric mass loss calculation and…
The amount of nebular gas that a planet can bind is limited by its cooling rate, which is set by the opacity of its envelope. Accreting dust and pebbles contribute to the envelope opacity and, thus, influence the outcome of planet…
Planets with several Earth masses and a few day orbital periods have been discovered through radial velocity and transit surveys. Regardless of their formation mechanism, a key evolution issue is the efficiency of their retention near their…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
The ubiquity of M dwarfs, combined with the relative ease of detecting terrestrial-mass planets around them, has made them prime targets for finding and characterising planets in the "Habitable Zone" (HZ). However, Kepler finds that…
Water worlds have been hypothesized as an alternative to photo-evaporation in order to explain the gap in the radius distribution of Kepler exoplanets. We explore water worlds within the framework of a joint mass-radius-period distribution…
The Kepler planetary system consists of two exoplanets at similar separations (0.115 & 0.128 AU), which have dramatically different densities. The inner planet has a density consistent with an Earth-like composition, while the outer planet…
Small planets ($\sim$1--3.9 $\Rearth$) constitute more than half of the inventory of the 4000-plus exoplanets discovered so far. Smaller planets are sufficiently dense to be rocky, but those with radii larger than $\sim$1.6 $\Rearth$ are…
The population of known low- to intermediate-mass exoplanets shows a large spread in densities, which is believed to be due to the diversity of planetary atmospheres and thus controlled by planetary atmospheric mass loss. One of the main…
Low-mass low-density planets discovered by Kepler in the super-Earth mass regime typically have large radii for their inferred masses, implying the presence of H$_2$-He atmospheres. These planets are vulnerable to atmospheric mass loss due…
We consider trends resulting from two formation mechanisms for short-period super-Earths: planet-planet scattering and migration. We model scenarios where these planets originate near the snow line in ``cold finger'' circumstellar disks.…
Atmospheric mass-loss is known to play a leading role in sculpting the demographics of small, close-in exoplanets. Knowledge of how such planets evolve allows one to ``rewind the clock'' to infer the conditions in which they formed. Here,…
Several circumbinary planets have recently been discovered. The orbit of a planet around a binary stellar system poses several dynamic constraints. The effects that radiation from the host stars may have on the planet atmospheres must be…
Tidal interactions and planet evaporation processes impact the evolution of close-in star-planet systems. We study the impact of stellar rotation on these processes. We compute the time evolution of star-planet systems consisting of a…
In recent years the focus of exoplanet research has shifted from the mere detection to detailed characterization. Precise measurements of the masses and radii of transiting planets have shown that some low-mass planets have extended…
The observed mass-radius relationship of low-mass planets informs our understanding of their composition and evolution. Recent discoveries of low mass, large radii objects ("super-puffs") have challenged theories of planet formation and…
Planets are born from the gas and dust discs surrounding young stars. Energetic radiation from the central star can drive thermal outflows from the discs atmospheres, strongly affecting the evolution of the discs and the nascent planetary…
Recently, the Kepler spacecraft has detected a sizable aggregate of objects, characterized by giant-planet-like radii and modest levels of stellar irradiation. With the exception of a handful of objects, the physical nature, and…