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Studies of future space- and ground-based exoplanet surveys often rely on models of planetary systems to simulate instrument response, estimate scientific yields, perform trade analyses, and study efficient observation strategies. Until…
Among the group of extrasolar planets, transiting planets provide a great opportunity to obtain direct measurements for the basic physical properties, such as mass and radius of these objects. These planets are therefore highly important in…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information regarding the internal structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the low-periastron distance regime due to the bias…
Understanding of clouds is instrumental in interpreting current and future spectroscopic observations of exoplanets. Modelling clouds consistently is complex, since it involves many facets of chemistry, nucleation theory, condensation…
The discovery of habitable exoplanets has long been a heated topic in astronomy. Traditional methods for exoplanet identification include the wobble method, direct imaging, gravitational microlensing, etc., which not only require a…
Differential spectroscopy during exoplanet transits permits to reconstruct spectra of small stellar surface portions that successively become hidden behind the planet. The center-to-limb behavior of stellar line shapes, asymmetries and…
The last decade has witnessed a rapid growth of the field of exoplanet discovery and characterisation. However, several big challenges remain, many of which could be addressed using machine learning methodology. For instance, the most…
From simulations of transit observations, it is found that the detectability of extrasolar planets depends only on two parameters: The signal-to-noise ratio during a transit, and the number of data points observed during transits. All other…
Imaging a star's companion at multiple epochs over a short orbital arc provides only four of the six coordinates required for a unique orbital solution. Probability distributions of possible solutions are commonly generated by Monte Carlo…
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,…
Disintegrating/evaporating rocky exoplanets can be observed not only as transiting planets, but also in a grazing, non-transiting regime, where the solid body of the planet does not transit, but part of the comet-like tail can transit. In…
We describe work in progress by a collaboration of astronomers and statisticians developing a suite of Bayesian data analysis tools for extrasolar planet (exoplanet) detection, planetary orbit estimation, and adaptive scheduling of…
In this PhD dissertation, I discuss issues of the Radial Velocities (RV) and transit methods. These techniques allow us to derive the mass and radius of an exoplanet, necessary to model its bulk structure and to have insight on its…
Current endeavours in exoplanet characterisation rely on atmospheric retrieval to quantify crucial physical properties of remote exoplanets from observations. However, the scalability and efficiency of the technique are under strain with…
A variety of terrestrial planets with different physical parameters and exotic atmospheres might plausibly exist outside our Solar System, waiting to be detected by the next generation of space-exploration missions. Some of these planets…
The current orbital geometries of exoplanet systems offer a fossilized record of the systems' dynamical histories. A particularly rich set of dynamical mechanisms is available to exoplanets residing in multi-star systems, which may have…
We analyze three years (1998-2000) of OGLE observations of microlensing events to place limits on the abundance of planets with a planet-to-star mass ratio $q=10^{-3}$ at distances $\sim 1-4$AU from their host stars, i.e. `cool Jupiters'.…
One of the main endeavors of the field of exoplanetary sciences is the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres on a population level. The current method of choice to accomplish this task is transmission spectroscopy, where the apparent…
One of the great quests of astronomy is to obtain the spectrum of a terrestrial planet orbiting within the habitable zone of its star, and the dominant challenge in doing so is to isolate the light of the planet from that of the star.…
Provided that sufficient resources are deployed, we can look forward to an extraordinary future in which we will characterize potentially habitable planets. Until now, we have had to base interpretations of observations on habitability…