Related papers: Impact of Tides on the Potential for Exoplanets to…
Gravitational perturbations on an exoplanet from a massive outer body, such as the Kozai-Lidov mechanism, can pump the exoplanet's eccentricity up to values that will destroy it via a collision or strong interaction with its parent star.…
Hot giant exoplanets are very exotic objects with no equivalent in the Solar System that allow us to study the behavior of atmospheres under extreme conditions. Their thermal and chemical day--night dichotomies associated with extreme wind…
We present a model to study secularly and tidally evolving three-body systems composed by two low-mass planets orbiting a star, in the case where the bodies rotation axes are always perpendicular to the orbital plane. The tidal theory…
The coupled interior-atmosphere system of terrestrial exoplanets remains poorly understood. Exoplanets show a wide variety of sizes, densities, surface temperatures, and interior structures, with important knock-on effects for this coupled…
Earth-like planets in the habitable zone (HZ) of M-dwarfs have recently been targeted in the search for exomoons. We study the stability and lifetime of large (Luna-like) moons, accounting for the effects of 3-body interactions and tidal…
One outstanding problem in extrasolar planet studies is why no co-orbital exoplanets have been found, despite numerous searches among the many known planetary systems, many of them in other mean-motion resonances. Here we examine the…
There are many competing theories and models describing the formation, migration and evolution of exoplanet systems. As both the precision with which we can characterize exoplanets and their host stars, and the number of systems for which…
The distribution of the orbits of close-in exoplanets shows evidence for on-going removal and destruction by tides. Tides raised on a planet's host star cause the planet's orbit to decay, even after the orbital eccentricity has dropped to…
The discovery and characterization of Earth-sized planets that are in, or near, a tidally-locked state are of crucial importance to understanding terrestrial planet evolution, and for which Venus is a clear analog. Exoplanetary science lies…
With more than 260 extrasolar planetary systems discovered to-date, the search for habitable planets has found new grounds. Unlike our solar system, the stars of many of these planets are hosts to eccentric or close-in giant bodies. Several…
The Gaia hypothesis postulates that life regulates its environment to be favorable for its own survival. Most planets experience numerous perturbations throughout their lifetimes such as asteroid impacts, volcanism, and the evolution of…
Recent detections of potentially habitable exoplanets around sunlike stars demand increased exploration of the physical conditions that can sustain life, by whatever methods available. Insight into these conditions can be gained by…
In this work, using the simulator VPLanet, we analyze the spin evolution of some selected exoplanets due to the tidal interaction with their host star. For a rocky planet, two spin conditions are possible, the trapped rotation and the fast…
Tidal interactions between short-period exoplanets and their host stars drive orbital decay and have likely led to engulfment of planets by their stars. Precise transit timing surveys, with baselines now spanning decades for some planets,…
Within the next few years, the first Earth-mass planets will be discovered around other stars. Some of those worlds will certainly lie within the classical "habitable zone" of their parent stars, and we will quickly move from knowing of no…
Studying exoplanets with their parent stars is crucial to understand their population, formation and history. We review some of the key questions regarding their evolution with particular emphasis on giant gaseous exoplanets orbiting close…
We explore the impact of obliquity variations on planetary habitability in hypothetical systems with high mutual inclination. We show that large amplitude, high frequency obliquity oscillations on Earth-like exoplanets can suppress the…
The presence of rings and moons around exoplanets is likely to be one of the next great discoveries in exoplanet research. Using theories developed for the Solar System, we explore the possibility of coupled ring-moon cycles around…
The determination of an exoplanet as rocky is critical for the assessment of planetary habitability. Observationally, the number of small-radius, transiting planets with accompanying mass measurements is insufficient for a robust…
The internal thermal and magnetic evolution of rocky exoplanets is critical to their habitability. We focus on the thermal-orbital evolution of Earth-mass planets around low mass M stars whose radiative habitable zone overlaps with the…