Related papers: Optimizing the search for transiting planets in lo…
Very high quality light curves are now available for thousands of detached eclipsing binary stars and transiting exoplanet systems as a result of surveys for transiting exoplanets and other large-scale photometric surveys. I have developed…
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…
The extended Kepler mission (K2) has revealed more than 500 transiting planets in roughly 500,000 stellar light curves. All of these were found either with the box least-squares algorithm or by visual inspection. Here we use our new transit…
We present the results of a search for potential transit signals in four years of photometry data acquired by the Kepler Mission. The targets of the search include 111,800 stars which were observed for the entire interval and 85,522 stars…
The census of exoplanets is incomplete for orbital distances larger than 1 AU. Here, we present 41 long-period planet candidates in 38 systems identified by Planet Hunters based on Kepler archival data (Q0-Q17). Among them, 17 exhibit only…
Eclipsing binary star systems provide the most accurate method of measuring both the masses and radii of stars. Moreover, they enable testing tidal synchronization and circularization theories, as well as constraining models of stellar…
The primary aim of this research is to evaluate several convolutional neural network-based object detection algorithms for identifying oscillation-like patterns in light curves of eclipsing binaries. This involves creating a robust…
We use six years (2003 to 2008) of Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment III microlensing observations to derive the survey detection efficiency for a range of planetary masses and projected distances from the host star. We perform an…
We present a new framework to characterize the occurrence rates of planet candidates identified by Kepler based on hierarchical Bayesian modeling, Approximate Bayesian Computing (ABC), and sequential importance sampling. For this study we…
Transit timing variations (TTVs) have proven to be a powerful technique for confirming Kepler planet candidates, for detecting non-transiting planets, and for constraining the masses and orbital elements of multi-planet systems. These TTV…
We present a theoretical analysis of the optical light curves (LCs) for short-period high-mass transiting extrasolar planet systems. Our method considers the primary transit, the secondary eclipse, and the overall phase shape of the LC…
In this paper, we determine the detectability of eclipsing binary star companions from eclipse timing variations using the Kepler mission dataset. Extensive and precise stellar time-series photometry from space-based missions enable…
We present a new method for confirming transiting planets based on the combination of transit timingn variations (TTVs) and dynamical stability. Correlated TTVs provide evidence that the pair of bodies are in the same physical system.…
Aims. We investigate a method to increase the efficiency of a targeted exoplanet search with the transit technique by preselecting a subset of candidates from large catalogs of stars. Assuming spin-orbit alignment, this can be done by…
We propose that the presence of additional planets in extrasolar planetary systems can be detected by long-term transit timing studies. If a transiting planet is on an eccentric orbit then the presence of another planet causes a secular…
We present a simple algorithm, BEER, to search for a combination of the BEaming, Ellipsoidal and the Reflection/heating periodic modulations, induced by short-period non-transiting low-mass companions. The beaming effect is due to the…
The sensitivities of two periodograms are compared for weak signal planet detection in transit surveys: the widely used Box-Least Squares (BLS) algorithm following light curve detrending and the Transit Comb Filter (TCF) algorithm following…
As the sensitivity and observing time of gravitational-wave detectors increase, a more diverse range of signals is expected to be observed from a variety of sources. Especially, long-lived gravitational-wave transients have received…
Currently, over forty transiting planets have been discovered by ground-based photometric surveys, and space-based missions like Kepler and CoRoT are expected to detect hundreds more. Follow-up photometric observations from the ground will…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will conduct a 2-year long wide-field survey searching for transiting planets around bright stars. Many TESS discoveries will be amenable to mass characterization via ground-based radial velocity…