Related papers: Warm giant exoplanet characterisation: current sta…
With JWST, we are directly imaging cold (~200-300K), solar-age giant exoplanets for the first time. At these temperatures many molecular features appear and water-ice clouds may condense and affect the emission spectrum; early photometric…
The evolution of space technology in recent years, fueled by advancements in computing such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), has profoundly transformed our capacity to explore the cosmos. Missions like the James…
We are now on a clear trajectory for improvements in exoplanet observations that will revolutionize our ability to characterize their atmospheric structure, composition, and circulation, from gas giants to rocky planets. However, exoplanet…
This paper constructs an analytic description for the late stages of giant planet formation. During this phase of evolution, the planet gains the majority of its final mass through gas accretion at a rapid rate. This work determines the…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has begun to spectrally characterize small exoplanets orbiting M-dwarf stars, but interpretation of these spectra is ambiguous, with stellar, instrumental, or atmospheric origins possible for apparent…
This article provides an overview of how models of giant planet interiors are constructed. We review measurements from past space missions that provide constraints for the interior structure of Jupiter. We discuss typical three-layer…
While conventional interior models for Jupiter and Saturn are based on the simplistic assumption of a solid core surrounded by a homogeneous gaseous envelope, we derive new models with an inhomogeneous distribution of heavy elements, i.e. a…
The direct detection of exoplanets has been the subject of intensive research in the recent years. Data obtained with future high-contrast imaging instruments optimized for giant planets direct detection are strongly limited by the speckle…
Understanding planet formation requires robust population studies, which are designed to reveal trends in planet properties. In this work, we aim to determine if different methods for selecting populations of exoplanets for atmospheric…
The physical characterization of exoplanets will require to take spectra at several orbital positions. For that purpose, a direct imaging capability is necessary. Direct imaging requires an efficient stellar suppression mechanism,…
With the increasing number of directly imaged giant exoplanets the current atmosphere models are often not capable of fully explaining the spectra and luminosity of the sources. A particularly challenging component of the atmosphere models…
Atmospheric characterization of directly imaged planets has thus far been limited to ground-based observations of young, self-luminous, Jovian planets. Near-term space- and ground- based facilities like \emph{WFIRST} and ELTs will be able…
Diffraction fundamentally limits our ability to image and characterize exoplanets. Current and planned coronagraphic searches for exoplanets are making incredible strides but are fundamentally limited by the inner working angle of a few…
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…
A primary objective of exoplanet atmosphere characterisation is to learn about planet formation and evolution, however, this is challenged by degeneracies. To determine whether differences in atmospheric composition can be reliably traced…
Detecting and characterising exoplanet atmospheres remains challenging because atmospheric signals can be comparable to residual noise and instrumental/astrophysical systematics. Spectral features span from a few ppm for small planets up to…
We present a new model of giant planet formation that extends the core-accretion model of Pollack etal (1996) to include migration, disc evolution and gap formation. We show that taking into account these effects can lead to a much more…
In the last decade, about a dozen giant exoplanets have been directly imaged in the IR as companions to young stars. With photometry and spectroscopy of these planets in hand from new extreme coronagraphic instruments such as SPHERE at VLT…
In principle, the combined measurements of the mass and radius a giant exoplanet allow one to determine the relative fraction of hydrogen and helium and of heavy elements in the planet. However, uncertainties on the underlying physics imply…
The internal properties of stars in the red-giant phase undergo significant changes on relatively short timescales. Long near-uninterrupted high-precision photometric timeseries observations from dedicated space missions such as CoRoT and…