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In the coming years and decades, advanced space- and ground-based observatories will allow an unprecedented opportunity to probe the atmospheres and surfaces of potentially habitable exoplanets for signatures of life. Life on Earth, through…
(Abridged) Super Earth exoplanets are being discovered with increasing frequency and some will be able to retain stable H2-dominated atmospheres. We study biosignature gases on exoplanets with thin H2 atmospheres and habitable surface…
In order to assess observational evidence for potential atmospheric biosignatures on exoplanets, it will be essential to test whether spectral fingerprints from multiple gases can be explained by abiotic or biotic-only processes. Here, we…
The discovery of inhabited exoplanets hinges on identifying biosignature gases. JWST can reveal biosignature gases, though current discoveries have yet to evidence life. The central challenge is attribution: how can we confidently identify…
Finding life on exoplanets from telescopic observations is an ultimate goal of exoplanet science. Life produces gases and other substances, such as pigments, which can have distinct spectral or photometric signatures. Whether or not life is…
Chemical disequilibrium quantified via available free energy has previously been proposed as a potential biosignature. However, exoplanet biosignature remote sensing work has not yet investigated how observational uncertainties impact the…
Coupled one-dimensional photochemical-climate calculations have been performed for hypothetical Earth-like planets around M dwarfs. Visible, near-infrared and thermal-infrared synthetic spectra of these planets were generated to determine…
Exoplanet characterization missions planned for the future will soon enable searches for life beyond our solar system. Critical to the search will be the development of life detection strategies that can search for biosignatures while…
Ocean worlds are considered as targets for life detection missions because they meet several key requirements for habitability. However, identifying potential life on other worlds requires observing clear and unambiguous biosignature…
Although the extra-solar planets discovered so far are of the giant, gaseous, type, the increased sensitivity of future surveys will result in the discovery of lower mass planets. The detection of O2 in the atmosphere of a rocky extra-solar…
We present the results for the detectability of the O2 and O3 molecular species in the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet using reflected light at the visible wavelengths. By quantifying the detectability as a function of signal-to-noise…
Molecular oxygen (O2) will be an important molecule in the search for biosignatures in terrestrial planetary atmospheres in the coming decades. In particular, O2 combined with a reducing gas is thought to be strong evidence for…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may be capable of finding biogenic gases in the atmospheres of habitable exoplanets around low mass stars. Considerable attention has been given to the detectability of biogenic oxygen, which could be…
Searching for signs of life is a primary goal of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). However, merely detecting oxygen, methane, or other widely discussed biosignatures is insufficient evidence for a biosphere. In parallel with…
The characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres through transit spectra is becoming increasingly feasible, and technology for direct detection remains ongoing. The possibility of detecting spectral features could enable quantitative…
The upcoming extremely large telescopes will provide the first opportunity to search for signs of habitability and life on non-transiting terrestrial exoplanets using high-contrast, high-resolution instrumentation. However, the suite of…
We investigate atmospheric responses of modeled hypothetical Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of the M-dwarf AD Leonis to reduced oxygen (O2), removed biomass (dead Earth), varying carbon dioxide (CO2) and surface relative humidity…
The ancestor philosophers' dream of thousands of new worlds is finally realised: about 3500 extrasolar planets have been discovered in the neighborhood of our Sun. Most of them are very different from those we used to know in our Solar…
Efforts to spectrally characterize the atmospheric compositions of temperate terrestrial exoplanets orbiting M-dwarf stars with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are now underway. Key molecular targets of such searches include O$_2$ and…
Studying the atmospheres of exoplanets is one of the most promising ways to learn about distant worlds beyond our solar system. The composition of an exoplanet's atmosphere can provide critical insights into its geology and potential…