Related papers: Exoplanet Mineralogy
This invited review for young researchers presents key ideas on cloud formation as key part for virtual laboratories for exoplanet atmospheres. The basic concepts are presented, followed by utilising a time-scale analysis to disentangle…
Rings around giant exoplanets (hereafter 'exorings') are still a missing planetary phenomenon among the vast number of discovered planets. Despite the fact there exist a large number of methods for identifying and characterizing these…
Determining the composition of giant exoplanets is crucial for understanding their origin and evolution. However, the planetary bulk composition is not measured directly but must be deduced from a combination of mass-radius measurements,…
In no other field of astrophysics has the impact of new instrumentation been as substantial as in the domain of exoplanets. Before 1995 our knowledge about exoplanets was mainly based on philosophical and theoretical considerations. The…
Exoplanet characterization is one of the main foci of current exoplanetary science. For super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, we mostly rely on mass and radius measurements, which allow to derive the body's mean density and give a rough estimate…
Secondary eclipse observations are a powerful way to investigate whether or not a rocky exoplanet hosts an atmosphere, as an atmospheric presence would transport heat to the nightside and render the dayside colder than anticipated. The…
The discovery of rings around extrasolar planets ("exorings") is one of the next breakthroughs in exoplanetary research. Previous studies have explored the feasibility of detecting exorings with present and future photometric sensitivities…
Exoplanets, short for `extra solar planets', are planets outside our solar system. They are objects with masses less than around 15 Jupiter-masses that orbit stars other than the Sun. They are small enough so they can not burn deuterium in…
We explore two ways in which objects of planetary masses can form. One is in disk systems like the solar system. The other is in dense clusters where stars and brown dwarfs form. We do not yet have the instrumental accuracy to detect…
Terrestrial planets form in a series of dynamical steps from the solid component of circumstellar disks. First, km-sized planetesimals form likely via a combination of sticky collisions, turbulent concentration of solids, and gravitational…
All circumbinary planets currently detected are in orbits that are almost coplanar to the binary orbit. While misaligned circumbinary planets are more difficult to detect, observations of polar aligned circumbinary gas and debris disks…
We investigate how the statistical distribution of extrasolar planets may be combined with knowledge of the host stars' metallicity to yield constraints on the migration histories of gas giant planets. At any radius, planets that barely…
I review the major open science questions in exoplanet atmospheres. These are mainly focused in the areas of understanding atmospheric physics, the atmosphere as a window into other realms of planetary physics, and the atmosphere is a…
Various problems of the formation and evolution of planetary systems are studied. Most of the studies are devoted to the Solar System. The collapse of the presolar cloud and the accumulation of planets are studied. The author considers the…
The basic geometry of the Solar System -- the shapes, spacings, and orientations of the planetary orbits -- has long been a subject of fascination as well as inspiration for planet formation theories. For exoplanetary systems, those same…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information regarding the internal structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the low-periastron distance regime due to the bias…
Carbon-enriched rocky exoplanets have been proposed around dwarf stars as well as around binary stars, white dwarfs and pulsars. However, the mineralogical make up of such planets is poorly constrained. We performed high-pressure…
To ascertain whether magnetic dynamos operate in rocky exoplanets more massive or hotter than the Earth, we developed a parametric model of a differentiated rocky planet and its thermal evolution. Our model reproduces the established…
Studying the internal structure of exoplanets-host stars compared to that of similar stars without detected planets is particularly important for the understanding of planetary formation. The observed overmetallicity of stars with planets…
We introduce a new method of searching for and characterizing extra-solar planets. We show that by monitoring the center-of-light motion of microlensing alerts using the next generation of high precision astrometric instruments the…