Related papers: Improving Exoplanet Detection Power: Multivariate …
The radial velocity method for detecting extra-solar planets relies on measuring the star's wobble around the system's center of mass. Since this is an indirect method, we may ask if there are other dynamical effects that can mimic such…
Discovering exoplanets orbiting young Suns can provide insight into the formation and early evolution of our own solar system, but the extreme magnetic activity of young stars obfuscates exoplanet detection. Here we monitor the long-term…
The Doppler technique measures the reflex radial motion of a star induced by the presence of companions and is the most successful method to detect exoplanets. If several planets are present, their signals will appear combined in the radial…
Studies of future space- and ground-based exoplanet surveys often rely on models of planetary systems to simulate instrument response, estimate scientific yields, perform trade analyses, and study efficient observation strategies. Until…
The search for exoplanets is an active field in astronomy, with direct imaging as one of the most challenging methods due to faint exoplanet signals buried within stronger residual starlight. Successful detection requires advanced image…
We present a novel approach for analysing radial velocity data that combines two features: all the planets are searched at once and the algorithm is fast. This is achieved by utilizing compressed sensing techniques, which are modified to be…
Analyzing exoplanets detected by radial velocity or transit observations, we determine the multiplicity of exoplanet host stars in order to study the influence of a stellar companion on the properties of planet candidates. Matching the host…
Transit and radial velocity searches are two techniques for identifying nearby extrasolar planets to Earth that transit bright stars. Identifying a robust sample of these exoplanets around bright stars for detailed atmospheric…
With about 700 confirmed extrasolar planets, it is time to move beyond discovery and towards characterization. Perhaps the most basic parameter of an extrasolar planet is its mass; however, this is very difficult to determine if the planet…
Stellar activity, such as starspots, can induce radial velocity (RV) variations that can mask or even mimic the RV signature of orbiting exoplanets. For this reason RV exoplanet surveys have been unsuccessful when searching for planets…
We explored two aspects of the problem of characterizing cool extrasolar giant planets in scattered optical light with a space based coronagraph. First, for a number of the known radial velocity (RV) giants we computed traditional forward…
Detecting planetary signatures in radial velocity time-series of young stars is challenging due to their inherently strong stellar activity. However, it is possible to learn information about the properties of the stellar signal by using…
The identification of mean motion resonances in exoplanetary systems or in the Solar System might be cumbersome when several planets and large number of smaller bodies are to be considered. Based on the geometrical meaning of the resonance…
Stellar photospheric activity is known to limit the detection and characterisation of extra-solar planets. In particular, the study of Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars requires data analysis methods that can accurately model the…
Stellar activity interferes with precise radial velocity measurements and limits our ability to detect and characterize planets, particularly Earth-like planets. We introduce \aestra (Auto-Encoding STellar Radial-velocity and Activity), a…
I describe ongoing work on development of Bayesian methods for exploring periodically varying phenomena in astronomy, addressing two classes of sources: pulsars, and extrasolar planets (exoplanets). For pulsars, the methods aim to detect…
The radial velocity signature of stellar noise is small, around the meter-per-second, but already too much for the detection of Earth mass planets in habitable zones. In this paper, we address the important role played by observational…
(Abridged) To this purpose, in the course of the thesis work we prepared a suitable software in order to use the same spectra acquired for radial velocity determinations (i.e., with the spectrum of the Iodine cell imprinted on) to measure…
Radial velocity (RV) planet searches are increasingly finding planets with small velocity amplitudes, with long orbital periods, or in multiple planet systems. Bayesian inference has the potential to improve the interpretation of existing…
Stellar magnetic activity produces time-varying distortions in the photospheric line profiles of solar-type stars. These lead to systematic errors in high-precision radial-velocity measurements, which limit efforts to discover and measure…