Related papers: Dynamically hot Super-Earths from outer giant plan…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
Context. The presence of a stellar companion can strongly influence the architecture and long-term stability of planetary systems. Motivated by the discovery of exoplanets exhibiting extremely high eccentricities (e >= 0.8) in systems with…
The Kepler Space telescope has uncovered around thirteen circumbinary planets (CBPs) that orbit a pair of stars and experience two sources of stellar flux. We characterize the top-of-atmosphere flux and surface temperature evolution in…
Kepler has discovered hundreds of systems with multiple transiting exoplanets which hold tremendous potential both individually and collectively for understanding the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Many of these systems…
Kepler's observation shows that many of the detected planets are super-Earths. They are inside a range of critical masses overlapping the core masses (2-20 $M_{\bigoplus}$), which would trigger the runaway accretion and develop the gas…
The extrasolar planets discovered to date possess unexpected orbital elements. Most orbit their host stars with larger eccentricities and smaller semi-major axes than similarly sized planets in our own solar system do. It is generally…
Discoveries of exoplanets using the radial velocity method are progressively reaching out to increasingly longer orbital periods as the duration of surveys continues to climb. The improving sensitivity to potential Jupiter analogs is…
A gap in exoplanets' radius distribution has been widely attributed to the photo-evaporation threshold of their progenitors' gaseous envelope. Giant impacts can also lead to substantial mass-loss. The outflowing gas endures tidal torque…
Kepler will monitor a sufficient number of stars that it is likely to detect single transits of planets with periods longer than the mission lifetime. We show that by combining the exquisite Kepler photometry of such transits with precise…
We present the discovery of 30 transiting giant planets that were initially detected using data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. These new planets orbit relatively bright ($G \leq 12.5$) FGK host stars with…
Eighty planetary systems of two or more planets are known to orbit stars other than the Sun. For most, the data can be sufficiently explained by non-interacting Keplerian orbits, so the dynamical interactions of these systems have not been…
Probing the connection between a star's metallicity and the presence and properties of any associated planets offers an observational link between conditions during the epoch of planet formation and mature planetary systems. We explore this…
Recent observations have revealed two new classes of planetary orbits. Rossiter- Mclaughlin (RM) measurements have revealed hot Jupiters in high-obliquity orbits. In addition, direct-imaging has discovered giant planets at large (~ 100 AU)…
Radial velocity and transit surveys indicate that solar-type stars bear super-Earths, with mass and period up to ~ 20 M_E and a few months, are more common than those with Jupiter-mass gas giants. In many cases, these super-Earths are…
The Kepler mission has discovered that multiple close-in super-Earth planets are common around solar-type stars, but their period ratios do not show strong pile-ups near mean motion resonances (MMRs). One scenario is that super-Earths form…
We establish the three-dimensional architecture of the Kepler-419 (previously KOI-1474) system to be eccentric yet with a low mutual inclination. Kepler-419b is a warm Jupiter at semi-major axis a = 0.370 +0.007/-0.006 AU with a large…
Analyses of exoplanet statistics suggest a trend of giant planet occurrence with host star mass, a clue to how planets like Jupiter form. One missing piece of the puzzle is the occurrence around late K dwarf stars (masses of 0.5-0.75Msun…
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…
Giant planets on short-period orbits are predicted to be inflated and eventually engulfed by their host stars. However, the detailed timescales and stages of these processes are not well known. Here we present the discovery of three hot…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a NASA-sponsored Explorer mission that will perform a wide-field survey for planets that transit bright host stars. Here, we predict the properties of the transiting planets that TESS will…