Related papers: Jupiter-like planets might be common in a low-dens…
Radial velocity surveys find Jupiter mass planets with semi-major axes a less than 0.1 AU around ~1% of solar-type stars; counting planets with $a$ as large as 5 AU, the fraction of stars having planets reaches ~ 10% {Marcy,Butler}. An…
Exoplanets classified as super-Earths are commonly observed on short period orbits, close to their host stars, but their abundance on wider orbits is poorly constrained. Gravitational microlensing is sensitive to exoplanets on wide orbits.…
Small planets, 1-4x the size of Earth, are extremely common around Sun-like stars, and surprisingly so, as they are missing in our solar system. Recent detections have yielded enough information about this class of exoplanets to begin…
Our understanding of planetary systems different to our own has grown dramatically in the past 30 years. However, our efforts to ascertain the degree to which the Solar system is abnormal or unique have been hindered by the observational…
The first directly imaged exoplanets indicated that wide-orbit giant planets could be more common around A-type stars. However, the relatively small number of nearby A-stars has limited the precision of exoplanet demographics studies to…
The region around the H$_2$O ice line, due to its higher surface density, seems to be the ideal location to form planets. The core of Jupiter, as well as the cores of close in gas giants are thus thought to form in this region of the disk.…
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…
Jupiter played an important role in determining the structure and configuration of the Solar System. Whereas hot-Jupiter type exoplanets preferentially form around metal-rich stars, the conditions required for the formation of planets with…
With the availability of considerably more data, we revisit the question of how special our Solar System is, compared to observed exoplanetary systems. To this goal, we employ a mathematical transformation that allows for a meaningful,…
Statistical analyses from exoplanet surveys around low-mass stars indicate that super-Earth and Neptune-mass planets are more frequent than gas giants around such stars, in agreement with core accretion theory of planet formation. Using…
We conducted a Doppler survey at Keck combined with NIRC2 K-band AO imaging to search for massive, long-period companions to 123 known exoplanet systems with one or two planets detected using the radial velocity (RV) method. Our survey is…
We use numerical simulations to model the migration of massive planets at small radii and compare the results with the known properties of 'hot Jupiters' (extrasolar planets with semi-major axes a < 0.1 AU). For planet masses Mp sin i > 0.5…
Microlensing is the only technique likely, within the next 5 years, to constrain the frequency of Jupiter-analogs. The PLANET collaboration has monitored nearly 100 microlensing events of which more than 20 have sensitivity to the…
The majority of stars form in star clusters and many are thought to have planetary companions. We demonstrate that multi-planet systems are prone to instabilities as a result of frequent stellar encounters in these star clusters much more…
Short-orbit gas giant planet formation/evolution mechanisms are still not well understood. One promising pathway to discriminate between mechanisms is to constrain the occurrence rate of these peculiar exoplanets at the earliest stage of…
Determining whether Earth-like planets are common or rare looms as a touchstone in the question of life in the universe. We searched for Earth-size planets that cross in front of their host stars by examining the brightness measurements of…
Currently, we have only limited means to probe the presence of planets at large orbital separations. Foreman-Mackey et al. searched for long-period transiting planets in the Kepler light curves using an automated pipeline. Here, we apply…
Since 1995, more than 500 exoplanets have been detected using different techniques, of which 11 were detected with gravitational microlensing. Most of these are gravitationally bound to their host stars. There is some evidence of…
The questions of how planets form and how common Earth-like planets are can be addressed by measuring the distribution of exoplanet masses and orbital periods. We report the occurrence rate of close-in planets (with orbital periods less…
Although the majority of radial velocity detected planets have been found orbiting solar-type stars, a fraction of them have been discovered around giant stars. These planetary systems have revealed different orbital properties when…