Related papers: Masses for Free-Floating Planets and Dwarf Planets
Free-floating objects (FFOs) in interstellar space$-$rogue planets, brown dwarfs, and large asteroids that are not gravitationally bound to any star$-$are expected to be ubiquitous throughout the Milky Way. Recent microlensing surveys have…
The number of exoplanets detected using gravitational microlensing technique is currently larger than 200, which enables population studies. Microlensing is uniquely sensitive to low-mass planets orbiting at separations of several…
Free-floating planetary-mass objects (FFPs) have been detected through direct imaging in several young, nearby star-forming regions. The properties of circumstellar disks around these objects may provide a valuable probe into their origin…
We propose and evaluate the feasibility of a new strategy to search for planets via microlensing observations. This new strategy is designed to detect planets in "wide" orbits, i.e., with orbital separation, a, greater than ~1.5 R_E.…
Observations indicate that disc fragmentation due to Gravitational Instability (GI) is the likely origin of massive companions to stars, such as giant planets orbiting M-dwarf stars, Brown Dwarf (BD) companions to FGK stars, and binary…
With round-the-clock monitoring of galactic bulge microlensing events, the PLANET experiment constrains the abundance and can yield the discovery of planets down to the mass of earth around galactic disk and bulge stars. Data taken until…
The masses and radii of extrasolar planets are key observables for understanding their interior, formation and evolution. While transit photometry and Doppler spectroscopy are used to measure the radii and masses respectively of planets…
Our knowledge of the birth mass function of neutron stars and black holes is based on observations of binary systems but the binary evolution likely affects the final mass of the compact object. Gravitational microlensing allows us to…
We investigate an in-situ formation scenario for Earth-mass terrestrial planets in short-period, potentially habitable orbits around low-mass stars (M_star < 0.3 M_sun). We then investigate the feasibility of detecting these Earth-sized…
Single massive satellites are of great observational interest, as they can produce prominent and potentially detectable signatures. For terrestrial planets and super-Earths, giant impacts in the late stages of formation may generate dense…
Understanding the coevolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies requires tracing their growth over time. Mass measurements of distant black holes have been limited to active nuclei and commonly rely on spatially unresolved…
We have simulated encounters between planetary systems and single stars in various clustered environments. This allows us to estimate the fraction of systems liberated, the velocity distribution of the liberated planets, and the separation…
We analyze an ensemble of microlensing events from the 2015 Spitzer microlensing campaign, all of which were densely monitored by ground-based high-cadence survey teams. The simultaneous observations from Spitzer and the ground yield…
I review efforts to determine the form and any lower limit to the initial mass function in the Galactic disk, using observations of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in the field, young clusters and star forming regions. I focus on the…
Having discovered that Earth-sized planets are common, we are now embarking on a journey to determine if Earth-like planets are also common. Finding Earth-like planets is one of the most compelling endeavors of the 21st century - leading us…
We investigate and compare the composition of M-dwarf planets in systems with only one known planet (``singles") to those residing in multi-planet systems (``multis") and the fundamental properties of their host stars. We restrict our…
We analyze five years of PLANET photometry of microlensing events toward the Galactic bulge to search for the short-duration deviations from single lens light curves that are indicative of the presence of planetary companions to the primary…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a fundamental property of star formation, offering key insight into the physics driving the process as well as informing our understanding of stellar populations, their by-products, and their…
Free-floating planetary mass objects--worlds that roam interstellar space untethered to a parent star--challenge conventional notions of planetary formation and migration, but also of star and brown dwarf formation. We focus on the…
The recent discovery of free-floating planets and their theoretical interpretation as celestial bodies, either condensed independently or ejected from parent stars in tight clusters, introduced an intriguing possibility. Namely, that some…