Related papers: The Exoplanet Orbital Eccentricity - Multiplicity …

A widely considered characteristic of extra-solar planetary systems has been a seeming tendency for major axes of adjacent orbits to librate in stable configurations. Based on a new catalog of extra-solar planets (Butler et al. 2006) and…

Exoplanets, short for `extra solar planets', are planets outside our solar system. They are objects with masses less than around 15 Jupiter-masses that orbit stars other than the Sun. They are small enough so they can not burn deuterium in…

We describe statistical methods for measuring the exoplanet multiplicity function - the fraction of host stars containing a given number of planets - from transit and radial-velocity surveys. The analysis is based on the approximation of…

Recent advances have enabled the discovery of a population of potentially Earth-like planets, yet their orbital eccentricity, which governs their climate and provides clues about their origin and dynamical history, is still largely…

This doctoral thesis studies stellar multiplicity in the solar neighborhood (d < 10 pc) and in systems hosting planets (d < 100 pc). Using data from the Washington Double Star Catalogue, Gaia DR3, and a comprehensive literature review, it…

Most known extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been discovered using the radial velocity$^{\bf 1,2}$ or transit$^{\bf 3}$ methods. Both are biased towards planets that are relatively close to their parent stars, and studies find that…

The Kepler Mission has discovered thousands of exoplanets and revolutionized our understanding of their population. This large, homogeneous catalog of discoveries has enabled rigorous studies of the occurrence rate of exoplanets and…

This paper considers secular interactions within multi-planet systems. In particular we consider dynamical evolution of known planetary systems resulting from an additional hypothetical planet on an eccentric orbit. We start with an…

One of the most remarkable properties of extrasolar planets is their high orbital eccentricities. Observations have shown that at least 20% of these planets, including some with particularly high eccentricities, are orbiting a component of…

We examine the distributions of eccentricity and host star metallicity of exoplanets as a function of their mass. Planets with M sin i >~ 4 M_J have an eccentricity distribution consistent with that of binary stars, while planets with M sin…

The large eccentricities of many giant extrasolar planets may represent the endpoint of gravitational scattering in initially more crowded systems. If so, the early evolution of the giant planets is likely to be more restrictive of…

We study how close-in systems such as those detected by Kepler are affected by the dynamics of bodies in the outer system. We consider two scenarios: outer systems of giant planets potentially unstable to planet--planet scattering, and wide…

We examine the eccentricity distribution(s) of radial velocity detected exoplanets. Previously, the eccentricity distribution was found to be described well by a Beta distribution with shape parameters $a=0.867, b=3.03$. Increasing the…

The high eccentricities of the known extrasolar planets remain largely unexplained. We explore the possibility that eccentricities are excited in the outer parts of an extended planetary disk by encounters with stars passing at a few…

Compact multi-planet systems containing super-Earths or sub-Neptunes, commonly found around solar-type stars, may be surrounded by external giant planet or stellar companions, which can shape the architechture and observability of the inner…

The Kepler Mission has detected dozens of compact planetary systems with more than four transiting planets. This sample provides a collection of close-packed planetary systems with relatively little spread in the inclination angles of the…

The dynamical history of a planetary system is recorded in the present day architecture of its constituent planets' sizes, orbital periods, and eccentricities. Studying the relationships between these quantities for large populations…

For extrasolar planets with orbital periods, P>10 days, radial velocity surveys find non-circular orbital eccentricities are common, <e>~0.3. Future surveys for extrasolar planets using the transit technique will also have sensitivity to…

Most of super-Earths detected by the radial velocity (RV) method have significantly smaller eccentricities than the eccentricities corresponding to velocity dispersion equal to their surface escape velocity ("escape eccentricities"). If…

Gas giant planets have been detected on eccentric orbits several hundreds of astronomical units in size around other stars. It has been proposed that even the Sun hosts a wide-orbit planet of 5-10 Earth masses, often called Planet Nine,…