Related papers: A sub-Saturn Mass-Radius Desert for Planets with E…
Sub-Neptune planets are a very common type of planets. They are inferred to harbour a primordial (H/He) envelope, on top of a (rocky) core, which dominates the mass. Here, we investigate the long-term consequences of the core properties on…
A remarkable discovery of NASA's Kepler mission is the wide diversity in the average densities of planets of similar mass. After gas disk dissipation, fully formed planets could interact with nearby planetesimals from a remnant planetesimal…
While the Solar System contains no planets between the sizes of Uranus and Saturn, our current exoplanet census includes several dozen such planets with well-measured masses and radii. These sub-Saturns exhibit a diversity of bulk…
Giant planet formation by core accretion requires a core that is sufficiently massive to trigger runaway gas accretion in less that the typical lifetime of protoplanetary disks. We explore how the minimum required core mass, M_crit, depends…
Approximately half of the extrasolar planets (exoplanets) with radii less than four Earth radii are in orbits with short periods. Despite their sheer abundance, the compositions of such planets are largely unknown. The available evidence…
Sub-Neptune-sized exoplanets represent one of the most common types of planets in the Milky Way, yet many of their properties are unknown. Here, we present a prescription to adapt the capabilities of the stellar evolution toolkit Modules…
The potential habitability of known exoplanets is often categorized by a nominal equilibrium temperature assuming a Bond albedo of either 0.3, similar to Earth, or 0. As an indicator of habitability, this leaves much to be desired, because…
The bulk composition of an exoplanet is commonly inferred from its average density. For small planets, however, the average density is not unique within the range of compositions. Variations of a number of important planetary…
The detailed interior structure models of super-Earth planets show that there is degeneracy in the possible bulk compositions of a super-Earth at a given mass and radius, determined via radial velocity and transit measurements,…
Transiting planets with radii 2-3 $R_\bigoplus$ are much more numerous than larger planets. We propose that this drop-off is so abrupt because at $R$ $\sim$ 3 $R_\bigoplus$, base-of-atmosphere pressure is high enough for the atmosphere to…
We present a systematic evaluation of the agreement between the observed radii of 90 well-characterized transiting extrasolar giant planets and their corresponding model radii. Our model radii are drawn from previously published…
Jupiter-mass planets with large semi-major axes ($a > 1.0$ AU) occur at a higher rate around evolved intermediate mass stars. There is a pronounced paucity of close-in ($a < 0.6$ AU), intermediate period ($5 < P < 100$ days), low-mass…
We consider the mass distribution of the nine unseen companions orbiting solar-type stars with minimum possible masses in the planetary mass range reported as of March 1998. We compare the mass distribution of these nine extrasolar planet…
Knowledge of both the mass and radius of an exoplanet allows us to estimate its mean density, and therefore its composition. Exoplanets seem to fill a very large parameter space in terms of mass and composition, and unlike the…
Over the past decade, observations of giant exoplanets (Jupiter-size) have provided key insights into their atmospheres, but the properties of lower-mass exoplanets (sub-Neptune) remain largely unconstrained because of the challenges of…
Measurements of the frequency with which short-period planets occur around main sequence stars allows a direct prediction of the number and types of such planets that will be amenable to characterization by high-contrast instruments on…
We generalize the problem of the semi-gray model to cases in which a non-negligible fraction of the stellar radiation falls on the long-wavelength range, and/or that the planetary long-wavelength emission penetrates into the transparent…
The radius of a planet is a fundamental parameter that probes its composition and habitability. Precise radius measurements are typically derived from the fraction of starlight blocked when a planet transits its host star. The wide-field…
The radius distribution of small, close-in exoplanets has recently been shown to be bimodal. The photoevaporation model predicted this bimodality. In the photoevaporation scenario, some planets are completely stripped of their primordial…
Probabilistic relationships between the mass and radius of planets are useful for a variety of purposes, including estimating the yields of planet discovery efforts and the radii of discovered planets given their masses. Previous work on…