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A significant fraction of hot Jupiters have orbital axes misaligned with their host stars' spin axes. The large stellar obliquities of these giants have long been considered potential signatures of high-eccentricity migration, which is…
Lensing by galaxy clusters is a versatile probe of cosmology and extragalactic astrophysics, but the accuracy of some of its predictions is limited by the simplified models adopted to reduce the (otherwise untractable) number of degrees of…
Through the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, several hot Jupiters have been found to exhibit spin-orbit misalignment, and even retrograde orbits. The high obliquity observed in these planets can be attributed to two primary formation mechanisms,…
Planets may be rotationally flattened, and their oblateness thus provide useful information on their formation and evolution. Here we develop a new algorithm that can compute the transit light curve due to an oblate planet very efficiently…
Measurements of the obliquities in exoplanet systems have revealed some remarkable architectures, some of which are very different from the Solar System. Nearly 200 obliquity measurements have been obtained through observations of the…
The catalog of stellar evolution tracks discussed in our previous work is meant to help characterize exoplanet host-stars of interest for follow-up observations with future missions like JWST. However, the utility of the catalog has been…
Multiple systems play an important role in the evolution of star clusters. First we discuss several formation mechanisms which depend on the presence of binaries, either primordial or of dynamical origin. Hierarchical configurations are…
Planets with non-zero obliquity and/or orbital eccentricity experience seasonal variations of stellar irradiation at local latitudes. The extent of the atmospheric response can be crudely estimated by the ratio between the orbital timescale…
Stars with hot Jupiters have obliquities ranging from 0-180 degrees, but relatively little is known about the obliquities of stars with smaller planets. Using data from the California-Kepler Survey, we investigate the obliquities of stars…
The new discoveries of circumbinary planetary systems shed light on the understanding of planetary system formation. Learning the architectural properties of these systems is essential for constraining the different formation mechanisms. We…
Star clusters are studied widely both as benchmarks for stellar evolution models and in their own right. Cluster age and mass distributions within galaxies are probes of star formation histories, and of cluster formation and disruption…
The orbits of binary stars precess as a result of general relativistic effects, forces arising from the asphericity of the stars, and forces from additional stars or planets in the system. For most binaries, the theoretical and observed…
We present theoretical calculations for the differential distribution of stellar orbital eccentricity in a galaxy halo, assuming that the stars constitute a spherical, collisionless system in dynamical equilibrium with a dark matter halo.…
We investigated the underlying architecture of planetary systems by deriving the distribution of planet multiplicity (number of planets) and the distribution of orbital inclinations based on the sample of planet candidates discovered by the…
We model hypothetical bio-dispersal within a single Galactic region using the stochastic infection dynamics process, which is inspired by these local properties of life dispersal on Earth. We split the population of stellar systems into…
We investigate the prospects for characterizing extrasolar giant planets by measuring planetary oblateness from transit photometry and inferring planetary rotational periods. The rotation rates of planets in the solar system vary widely,…
The six-degree obliquity of the sun suggests that either an asymmetry was present in the solar system's formation environment, or an external torque has misaligned the angular momentum vectors of the sun and the planets. However, the exact…
Having a massive moon has been considered as a primary mechanism for stabilized planetary obliquity, an example of which being our Earth. This is, however, not always consistent with the exoplanetary cases. This article details the…
It has been shown that hot Jupiters systems with massive, hot stellar primaries exhibit a wide range of stellar obliquities. On the other hand, hot Jupiter systems with low-mass, cool primaries often have stellar obliquities close to zero.…
We present three-dimensional atmospheric circulation models of a hypothetical "warm Jupiter" planet, for a range of possible obliquities from 0-90 degrees. We model a Jupiter-mass planet on a 10-day orbit around a Sun-like star, since this…