Related papers: Dynamical Constraints on Exoplanets
Liquid water oceans are at the center of our search for life on exoplanets because water is a strict requirement for life as we know it. However, oceans are dynamic habitats---and some oceans may be better hosts for life than others. In…
Modeling the outflow of planetary atmospheres is important for understanding the evolution of exoplanet systems and for interpreting their observations. Modern theoretical models of exoplanet atmospheres become increasingly detailed and…
Over the past years, the amount of detected multi-planet systems significantly grew, an important sub-class of which being the compact configurations. A precise knowledge of them is crucial to understand the conditions with which planetary…
Understanding planet formation requires robust population studies, which are designed to reveal trends in planet properties. In this work, we aim to determine if different methods for selecting populations of exoplanets for atmospheric…
In no other field of astrophysics has the impact of new instrumentation been as substantial as in the domain of exoplanets. Before 1995 our knowledge about exoplanets was mainly based on philosophical and theoretical considerations. The…
Exoplanet science promises a continued rapid accumulation of new observations in the near future, energizing a drive to understand and interpret the forthcoming wealth of data to identify signs of life beyond our Solar System. The large…
Long-period transiting exoplanets provide an opportunity to study the mass-radius relation and internal structure of extrasolar planets. Their studies grant insights into planetary evolution akin to the Solar System planets, which, in…
One of the most fundamental questions in exoplanetology is to determine whether a given planet is habitable. We estimate the relative likelihood of a planet's propensity towards habitability by considering key physical characteristics such…
Future direct imaging missions will primarily observe planets that have been previously detected, mostly via the radial velocity (RV) technique, to characterize planetary atmospheres. In the meantime, direct imaging may discover new planets…
This chapter reviews the current state of observational and theoretical efforts in the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres, with a focus on developments enabled through the Swiss National Centre for Competence in Research (NCCR)…
Exoplanet imaging is a major challenge in astrophysics due to the need for high angular resolution and high contrast. We present a multi-scale statistical model for the nuisance component corrupting multivariate image series at high…
The new 2-planetary system around HD169830 has been announced during the XIX-th IAP Colloquium "Extrasolar Planets: Today & Tomorrow" (Paris, June 30 - July 4, 2003) by the Geneva Extrasolar Planet Search team. We study the orbital dynamics…
Stellar radial velocity (RV) measurements have proven to be a very successful method for detecting extrasolar planets. Analysing RV data to determine the parameters of the extrasolar planets is a significant statistical challenge owing to…
The goal of planet formation as a field of study is not only to provide the understanding of how planets come into existence. It is also an interdisciplinary bridge which links astronomy to geology and mineralogy. Recent observations of…
Current planet formation theories rely on initially compact orbital configurations undergoing a (possibly extended) phase of giant impacts following the dispersal of the dissipative protoplanetary disk. The orbital architectures of observed…
With more than 260 extrasolar planetary systems discovered to-date, the search for habitable planets has found new grounds. Unlike our solar system, the stars of many of these planets are hosts to eccentric or close-in giant bodies. Several…
Roughly half of Solar-type planet hosts have stellar companions, so understanding how these binary companions affect the formation and evolution of planets is an important component to understanding planetary systems overall. Measuring the…
Most circumbinary planets have been discovered by their transits, limiting our understanding of such systems to those with mutually coplanar architectures. This bias makes it difficult to infer the true circumbinary planet population,…
Exoplanet discoveries over recent years have shown that terrestrial planets are exceptionally common. Many of these planets are in compact systems that result in complex orbital dynamics. A key step toward determining the surface conditions…
Stellar activity due to different processes (magnetic activity, photospheric flows) affects the measurement of radial velocities (RV). Radial velocities have been widely used to detect exoplanets, although the stellar signal significantly…