Related papers: 2D Retrieval Frameworks for Hot Jupiter Phase Curv…
Exoplanetary atmospheric retrieval refers to the inference of atmospheric properties of an exoplanet given an observed spectrum. The atmospheric properties include the chemical compositions, temperature profiles, clouds/hazes, and energy…
Detailed characterization of exoplanets has begun to yield measurements of their atmospheric properties that constrain the planets' origins and evolution. For example, past observations of the dayside emission spectrum of the hot Jupiter…
Accurate estimations of atmospheric properties of exoplanets from transmission spectra require understanding of degeneracies between model parameters and observations that can resolve them. We conduct a systematic investigation of such…
Recent spectroscopic observations of transiting hot Jupiters have permitted the derivation of the thermal structure and molecular abundances of H2O, CO2, CO, and CH4 in these extreme atmospheres. Here, for the first time, we apply the…
This dissertation as a whole aims to provide means to better understand hot-Jupiter planets through observing, performing thermochemical calculations, and modeling their atmospheres. We used Spitzer multi-wavelength secondary-eclipse…
Motivated by a high Spitzer IRAC oversubscription rate, we present a new technique of randomly and sparsely sampling phase curves of hot Jupiters. Snapshot phase curves are enabled by technical advances in precision pointing as well as…
In recent years, it has become clear that a substantial fraction of transiting exoplanets have some form of aerosol present in their atmospheres. Transit spectroscopy - mostly of hot Jupiters, but also of some smaller planets - has provided…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will enable the search for and characterization of terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres in the habitable zone via transmission spectroscopy. However, relatively little work has been done to use solar…
We perform atmospheric retrievals on the full optical to infrared ($0.3-5 \, \mu \mathrm{m}$) transmission spectrum of the inflated hot Jupiter WASP-52b by combining HST/STIS, WFC3 IR, and Spitzer/IRAC observations. As WASP-52 is an active…
Clouds are prevalent in many of the exoplanet atmospheres that have been observed to date. For transiting exoplanets, we know if clouds are present because they mute spectral features and cause wavelength-dependent scattering. While the…
Many of the exoplanets for which we can obtain the highest SNR transit spectra are tidally locked. The atmospheres on tidally-locked planets likely exhibit large differences between the day and night side of the planet, the poles, and the…
Although transit spectroscopy is a powerful method for studying the composition, thermal properties and dynamics of exoplanet atmospheres, only a few transiting terrestrial exoplanets will be close enough to allow significant transit…
Ground-based high-resolution spectroscopy (HRS) has detected numerous chemical species and atmospheric dynamics in exoplanets, most notably ultra-hot Jupiters (UHJs). However, quantitative estimates on abundances have been challenging but…
Hi-resolution spectroscopy (R > 25,000) has recently emerged as one of the leading methods to detect atomic and molecular species in the atmospheres of exoplanets. However, it has so far been lacking in a robust method to extract…
Close-in warm Jupiters orbiting M dwarf stars are expected to exhibit diverse atmospheric chemistry, with clouds playing a key role in shaping their albedo, heat distribution, and spectral properties. We study WASP-80b, a warm Jupiter…
Modeling the atmospheres of exoplanets is fundamental to understanding their atmospheric physics and chemical processes. While one-dimensional (1D) atmospheric models with 1D radiative transfer (RT) have been widely used, advances in…
Ultra-hot Jupiters are highly irradiated gas giant exoplanets on close-in orbits around their host stars. We analyzed high-resolution spectra from CARMENES, HARPS-N, and ESPaDOnS taken over eight observation nights to study the emission…
Atmospheric retrieval of exoplanets from spectroscopic observations requires an extensive exploration of a highly degenerate and high-dimensional parameter space to accurately constrain atmospheric parameters. Retrieval methods commonly…
We present a novel physically motivated, parametrized temperature model for phase-curve retrieval, able to self-consistently assess the variation in thermal structure in multidimensions. To develop this approach, we drew motivation from…
Conventional atmospheric retrieval codes are designed to extract information, such as chemical abundances, thermal structures and cloud properties, from fully "reduced" spectra obtained during transit or eclipse. Reduced spectra, however,…