Related papers: Radial Velocities as an Exoplanet Discovery Method
The eccentricity distribution of exoplanets is known from radial velocity surveys to be divergent from circular orbits beyond 0.1 AU. This is particularly the case for large planets where the radial velocity technique is most sensitive. The…
High-resolution Doppler spectroscopy is a powerful tool for identifying molecular species in the atmospheres of both transiting and non-transiting exoplanets. Currently, such data is analysed using cross-correlation techniques to detect the…
The Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect is the distortion of stellar spectral lines that occurs during eclipses or transits, due to stellar rotation. We assess the future prospects for using the RM effect to measure the alignment of planetary…
A key to understand exoplanets is characterisation of their host stars. One of the most powerful tools to characterise stellar properties like effective temperature, surface gravity and metallicity, is spectroscopy based on observations of…
Many of the planets discovered via the radial velocity technique are hot Jupiters in 3-5 day orbits with ~10$% chance of transiting their parent star. However, radial velocity surveys for extra-solar planets generally require substantial…
Exoplanets which are detected using the radial velocity technique have a well-known ambiguity of their true mass, caused by the unknown inclination of the planetary orbit with respect to the plane of the sky. Constraints on the inclination…
Precise Doppler radial-velocity (RV) instruments will continue to play an essential role in advancing our holistic understanding of exoplanetary systems. The combination of orbital parameters from transit surveys and follow-up RV…
This work is part of an ongoing project which aims to detect terrestrial planets in our neighbouring star system $\alpha$ Centauri using the Doppler method. Owing to the small angular separation between the two components of the $\alpha$…
The discovery and characterization of exoplanets around nearby stars is driven by profound scientific questions about the uniqueness of Earth and our Solar System, and the conditions under which life could exist elsewhere in our Galaxy.…
The exoplanet detection is the most exciting and challenging field of astronomy. The discovery of many exoplanets has revolutionized our understanding of the formation and evolution of planetary systems and has showed new ways to search for…
Circumbinary planets - planets that orbit both stars in a binary system - offer the opportunity to study planet formation and orbital migration in a different environment compare to single stars. However, despite the fact that > 90% of…
We demonstrate the ability to measure precise stellar barycentric radial velocities with the dispersed fixed-delay interferometer technique using the Exoplanet Tracker (ET), an instrument primarily designed for precision differential…
Research in extrasolar-planet science is data-driven. With the advent of radial-velocity instruments like HARPS and HARPS-N, and transit space missions like Kepler, our ability to discover and characterise extrasolar planets is no longer…
The stable oscillations of pulsating stars can serve as accurate timepieces, which may be monitored for the influence of exoplanets. An external companion gravitationally tugs the host star, causing periodic changes in pulsation arrival…
Usually, the determination of radial velocities of stars relies on the shift of spectral lines by the Doppler effect. Russel & Atkinson (1931) and Oort (1932) already noted that due to the large proper motion and parallax of the white dwarf…
The Doppler shift of a radio signal is caused by the relative motion between the transmitter and receiver. The change in frequency of the signal over time is called drift rate. In the studies of radio SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial…
The determination of velocities of stars from precise Doppler measurements is described here using relativistic theory of astronomical reference frames so as to determine the Keplerian and post-Keplerian parameters of binary systems. We…
Planetary rotation rates and obliquities provide information regarding the history of planet formation, but have not yet been measured for evolved extrasolar planets. Here we investigate the theoretical and observational perspective of the…
Radial velocity surveys are beginning to reach the time baselines required to detect Jupiter analogs, as well as sub-Saturn mass planets in close orbits. Therefore it is important to understand the sensitivity of these surveys at long…
In this PhD dissertation, I discuss issues of the Radial Velocities (RV) and transit methods. These techniques allow us to derive the mass and radius of an exoplanet, necessary to model its bulk structure and to have insight on its…