Related papers: Metallicity-Dependent Signatures in the Kepler Pla…
The entire evolution of the Milky Way, including its mass-assembly and star-formation history, is imprinted onto the chemo-dynamical distribution function of its member stars, f(x, v, [X/H]), in the multi-dimensional phase space spanned by…
A possible relation between the high dispersion in metallicity of metal-poor halo stars and the minor merger processes in the history of the Galaxy is presented. The foreign populations of stars in the satellites through minor merger…
Abundance analyses of stars with planets have revealed that their metallicities are enhanced relative to field stars. Such a trend was originally suggested to be due to accretion of iron-rich planetary material. Based on this assumption, we…
We report the detection of two planetary mass companions to the solar-type star HD 155358. The two planets have orbital periods of 195.0 and 530.3 days, with eccentricities of 0.11 and 0.18. The minimum masses for these planets are 0.89 and…
We estimate the frequency of Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor (CEMP) stars among very metal-poor stars, based on an analysis of 349 stars with available high-resolution spectra observed as part of the Hamburg/ESO R-process Enhanced Star (HERES)…
Jupiter played an important role in determining the structure and configuration of the Solar System. Whereas hot-Jupiter type exoplanets preferentially form around metal-rich stars, the conditions required for the formation of planets with…
In 2005 we suggested a relation between the optimal locus of gas giant planet formation, prior to migration, and the metallicity of the host star, based on the core accretion model and radial profiles of dust surface density and gas…
When a planet falls onto the surface of its host star, the added high-metallicity material does not remain in the surface layers, as often assumed, but is diluted into the interior through fingering (thermohaline) convection. Until now,…
The location of M dwarfs in the V-K_s--M_Ks color-magnitude diagram (CMD) has been shown to correlate with metallicity. We demonstrate that previous empirical photometric calibrations of M dwarf metallicity exploiting this correlation…
Dust in protoplanetary disks is recognized as the building blocks of planets. In the core accretion scenario, the abundance of dust in disks (or metallicity) is crucial for forming cores of gas giants. We present our recent progress on the…
While stellar metallicity has long been known to correlate with planetary properties, the galactic metallicity gradient alone does not account for the trend. It is therefore possible that there exists some time-dependent component to planet…
The ongoing High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Search (HARPS) has found that 30-50% of GK dwarfs in the solar neighborhood host planets with sub-Neptune masses in orbits of P < 50 days. At first glance, this overall occurrence rate seems…
Metallicity is known to significantly affect the radial expansion of a massive star: the lower the metallicity, the more compact the star, especially during its post-MS evolution. We study this effect in the context of binary evolution.…
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…
Recent studies have shown that atmospheric mass-loss powered by the cooling luminosity of a planet's core can explain the observed radius valley separating super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, even without photoevaporation. In this work, we…
The Kepler mission has discovered thousands of exoplanets around various stars with different spectral types (M, K, G, and F) and thus different masses and effective temperatures. Previous studies have shown that the planet occurrence rate,…
The research of exoplanets has entered an era in which we characterize extrasolar planets. This has become possible with measurements of radii and luminosities. Meanwhile, radial velocity surveys discover also very low-mass planets. Uniting…
Formation of planets in the Neptune size range with low-mass, but voluminous, H_2/He gaseous envelopes is modeled by detailed numerical simulations according to the core-nucleated accretion scenario. Formation locations ranging from 0.5 to…
We present a comprehensive body of simulations of the formation of exoplanetary populations that incorporate the role of planet traps in slowing planetary migration. The traps we include in our model are the water ice line, the disk heat…
Very metal-deficient stars that exhibit enhancements of their carbon abundances are of crucial importance for understanding a number of issues -- the nature of stellar evolution among the first generations of stars, the shape of the Initial…