Related papers: Higher Water Loss on Earth-like Exoplanets in Ecce…
Improved photometric sensitivity from space-based telescopes have enabled the detection of phase variations for a small sample of hot Jupiters. However, exoplanets in highly eccentric orbits present unique opportunities to study the effects…
The late phases of the orbital evolution of an Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star are revisited considering the effect of the density fluctuations associated with convective motions inside the star. Such fluctuations produce a random…
The architecture of a planetary system can influence the habitability of a planet via orbital effects, particularly in the areas of stability and eccentricity. Some of these effects are readily apparent, particularly when they occur on…
We present a time-dependent radiative model for the atmosphere of extrasolar planets that takes into account the eccentricity of their orbit. In addition to the modulation of stellar irradiation by the varying planet-star distance, the…
Planets in the liquid-water habitable zone of low-mass stars experience large tidal forces, $10^3$ to $10^4$ times those on Earth, due to the small distance between the habitable zone and the host stars. Therefore, interior solid tides,…
We investigate how well the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE) mission concept can detect habitable conditions on exoplanets through the presence of atmospheric water vapor as a proxy for surface oceans. We model the atmosphere of a…
Earth-like planets in the circumstellar habitable zone (HZ) may have dramatically different climate outcomes depending on their spin-orbit parameters, altering their habitability for life as we know it. We present a suite of 93 ROCKE-3D…
Little is known about the interaction between atmospheres and crusts of exoplanets so far, but future space missions and ground-based instruments are expected to detect molecular features in the spectra of hot rocky exoplanets. We aim to…
Planets with large bodies of water on their surface will have more temperate and stable climates, and such planets are the ideal places for life-as-we-know-it to arise and evolve. A key science case for the Habitable Worlds Observatory…
Exoplanets with substantial Hydrogen/Helium atmospheres have been discovered in abundance, many residing extremely close to their parent stars. The extreme irradiation levels these atmospheres experience causes them to undergo hydrodynamic…
Observations of the population of cold Jupiter planets ($r>$1 AU) show that nearly all of these planets orbit their host star on eccentric orbits. For planets up to a few Jupiter masses, eccentric orbits are thought to be the outcome of…
We present the analysis of high-resolution optical spectra of four transits of 55Cnc e, a low-density, super-Earth that orbits a nearby Sun-like star in under 18 hours. The inferred bulk density of the planet implies a substantial envelope,…
Earth's climate is influenced by over a dozen feedbacks, but only three dominate its long-term climate behavior. Models of the exoplanet habitable zone (HZ) assume that this is similar for other Earth-like planets. We used dynamical…
While it is expected that the large-scale tropical circulation should undergo some changes in a warmer climate, it remains an open question whether its characteristic features, such as the Hadley cell, the intertropical convergence zone, or…
Identifying Earth-like planets outside out solar system is a leading research goal in astronomy, but determining if candidate planets have atmospheres, and more importantly if they can retain atmospheres, is still out of reach. In this…
The atmospheric composition of transiting exoplanets can be characterized during transit by spectroscopy. For the transit of an Earth twin, models predict that biogenic $O_2$ and $O_3$ should be detectable, as well as water vapour, a…
As a contribution to the study of the habitability of extrasolar planets, we implemented a 1-D Energy Balance Model (EBM), the simplest seasonal model of planetary climate, with new prescriptions for most physical quantities. Here we apply…
Planet formation models suggest that the small exoplanets that migrate from beyond the snowline of the protoplanetary disk likely contain water-ice-rich cores ($\sim 50\%$ by mass), also known as the water worlds. While the observed radius…
Water-rich super-Earth exoplanets are expected to be common. We explore the effect of late giant impacts on the final bulk abundance of water in such planets. We present the results from smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of…
We present here the analysis of 30 gaseous extrasolar planets, with temperatures between 600 and 2400 K and radii between 0.35 and 1.9 $R_\mathrm{Jup}$. The quality of the HST/WFC3 spatially scanned data combined with our specialized…