Related papers: Growth Model Interpretation of Planet Size Distrib…

During the late stage of planet formation when Mars-size cores appear, interactions among planetary cores can excite their orbital eccentricities, speed their merges and thus sculpture the final architecture of planet systems. This series…

Studies of exoplanet demographics require large samples and precise constraints on exoplanet host stars. Using the homogeneous Kepler stellar properties derived using Gaia Data Release 2 by Berger et al. (2020), we re-compute Kepler planet…

Kepler has found hundreds of Neptune-size (2-6 R_Earth) planet candidates within 0.5 AU of their stars. The nature of the vast majority of these planets is not known because their masses have not been measured. Using theoretical models of…

The nature of sub-Neptunes remains unknown due to degeneracies in interior structure solutions. However, a statistical set of small planets with measured masses and radii can be used to test the planet formation theory prediction of large…

Observations of structure in circumstellar debris discs provide circumstantial evidence for the presence of massive planets at large (several tens of au) orbital radii, where the timescale for planet formation via core accretion is…

The radius of a planet is a fundamental parameter that probes its composition and habitability. Precise radius measurements are typically derived from the fraction of starlight blocked when a planet transits its host star. The wide-field…

Small planets ($\sim$1--3.9 $\Rearth$) constitute more than half of the inventory of the 4000-plus exoplanets discovered so far. Smaller planets are sufficiently dense to be rocky, but those with radii larger than $\sim$1.6 $\Rearth$ are…

Among exoplanets, the small-size population constitutes the dominant one, with a diversity of properties and compositions ranging from rocky to gas dominated envelope. While a large fraction of them have masses and radii similar to or…

The recent detection of planets around very low mass stars raises the question of the formation, composition and potential habitability of these objects. We use planetary system formation models to infer the properties, in particular their…

The radii of some transiting extrasolar giant planets are larger than would be expected by the standard theory. We address this puzzle with the model of coupled radius-orbit tidal evolution developed by \citet{Ibgui_and_Burrows_2009}. The…

By surveying new fields for the shortest-period "big" planets, the Kepler spacecraft could provide the statistics to more clearly measure the occurrence distributions of giant and medium planets. This would allow separate determinations for…

In order to characterize giant exoplanets and better understand their origin, knowledge of how the planet's composition depends on its mass and stellar environment is required. In this work, we simulate the thermal evolution of gaseous…

We constrain the densities of Earth- to Neptune-size planets around very cool (Te =3660-4660K) Kepler stars by comparing 1202 Keck/HIRES radial velocity measurements of 150 nearby stars to a model based on Kepler candidate planet radii and…

The observed exoplanet population features a gap in the radius distribution that separates the smaller super-Earths ($\lesssim$1.7 Earth radii) from the larger sub-Neptunes ($\sim$1.7--4 Earth radii). While mass loss theories can explain…

Measures of exoplanet bulk densities indicate that small exoplanets with radius less than 3 Earth radii ($R_\oplus$) range from low-density sub-Neptunes containing volatile elements to higher density rocky planets with Earth-like or…

Using the cumulative catalog of planets detected by the NASA Kepler mission, we reconstruct the intrinsic occurrence of Earth- to Neptune-size (1 - 4$R_{\oplus}$) planets and their distributions with radius and orbital period. We analyze…

We use models of coupled thermal evolution and photo-evaporative mass loss to understand the formation and evolution of the Kepler-36 system. We show that the large contrast in mean planetary density observed by Carter et al. (2012) can be…

We carry out an independent search of Kepler photometry for small transiting planets with sizes 0.5--8.0 times that of Earth and orbital periods between 5 and 50 days, with the goal of measuring the fraction of stars harboring such planets.…

In the core-accretion model, gas-giant planets form solid cores which then accrete gaseous envelopes. Tidal interactions with disk gas cause a core to undergo inward type-I migration in 10^4 to 10^5 years. Cores must form faster than this…

Recent observations revealed a bimodal radius distribution of small, short-period exoplanets with a paucity in their occurrence, a radius `valley', around $1.5-2.0$ $R_\oplus$. In this work, we investigate the effect of a planet's own…