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Gravitational microlensing provides a unique window on the properties and prevalence of extrasolar planetary systems because of its ability to find low-mass planets at separations of a few AU. The early evidence from microlensing indicates…
Of the over 200 known extrasolar planets, 14 exhibit transits in front of their parent stars as seen from Earth. Spectroscopic observations of the transiting planets can probe the physical conditions of their atmospheres. One such technique…
Direct measurements of the spectra of extrasolar giant planets are the keys to determining their physical and chemical nature. The goal of theory is to provide the tools and context with which such data are understood. It is only by putting…
A major motivation of spectroscopic observations of giant exoplanets is to unveil planet formation processes from atmospheric compositions. Several recent studies suggested that atmospheric nitrogen, like carbon and oxygen, can provide…
The H2O abundance of a planetary atmosphere is a powerful indicator of formation conditions. Inferring H2O in the solar system giant planets is challenging, due to condensation depleting the upper atmosphere of water vapour. Substantially…
Ariel will mark the dawn of a new era as the first large-scale survey characterising exoplanetary atmospheres with science objectives to address fundamental questions about planetary composition, evolution and formation. In this study, we…
Astronomers are debating whether the plentiful "sub-Neptune" exoplanets -- worlds a bit larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune -- are predominantly rocky planets, water-rich "ocean worlds," or gas-enshrouded mini-Neptunes. This question…
We investigate the detectability of atmospheric spectral features of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone (HZ) around M dwarfs with the future James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We use a coupled 1D climate-chemistry-model to simulate…
Planets smaller than Neptune and larger than Earth make up the majority of the discovered exoplanets. Those with H$_2$-rich atmospheres are prime targets for atmospheric characterization. The transition between the two main classes,…
The field of exo-atmospheric characterisation is progressing at an extraordinary pace. Atmospheric observations are now available for tens of exoplanets, mainly hot and warm inflated gas giants, and new molecular species continue to be…
More than a thousand exoplanets have been discovered over the last decade. Perhaps more excitingly, probing their atmospheres has become possible. With current data we have glimpsed the diversity of exoplanet atmospheres that will be…
Ground-based high-resolution spectroscopy (HRS) has detected numerous chemical species and atmospheric dynamics in exoplanets, most notably ultra-hot Jupiters (UHJs). However, quantitative estimates on abundances have been challenging but…
Visible and near-infrared spectra of transiting hot Jupiter planets have recently been observed, revealing some of the atmospheric constituents of their atmospheres. In the near future, it is probable that primary and secondary eclipse…
Exoplanetary atmospheric retrieval refers to the inference of atmospheric properties of an exoplanet given an observed spectrum. The atmospheric properties include the chemical compositions, temperature profiles, clouds/hazes, and energy…
The prevalence of atmospheres on rocky planets is one of the major questions in exoplanet astronomy, but there are currently no published unambiguous detections of atmospheres on any rocky exoplanets. The MIRI instrument on JWST can measure…
We use Keck/NIRSPEC to survey a sample of of young ($<$1 Gyr), short period mini Neptunes orbiting nearby K dwargs to measure their mass loss via the metastable helium line. We detect helium absorption from all four of the targets in our…
Most of the molecules detected thus far in exoplanet atmospheres, such as water and CO, are present for a large range of pressures and temperatures. In contrast, metal hydrides exist in much more specific regimes of parameter space, and so…
With a new generation of observatories coming online this decade, the process of characterizing exoplanet atmospheres will need to be reinvented. Currently mostly on the instrumental side, characterization bottlenecks will soon stand by the…
We present model atmospheres for an Earth-like planet orbiting the entire grid of main sequence FGK stars with effective temperatures ranging from Teff = 4250K to Teff = 7000K in 250K intervals. We model the remotely detectable spectra of…
The aim of this work is to obtain precise atmospheric parameters and chemical abundances automatically for solar twins and analogs to find signatures of exoplanets, as well as to assess how peculiar the Sun is compared to these stars and to…