Related papers: POSEIDON: A Multidimensional Atmospheric Retrieval…
With the rapid developments in the exoplanet field, more and more terrestrial exoplanets are being detected. Characterising their atmospheres using transit observations will become a key datum in the quest for detecting an Earth-like…
Using forward models for representative exoplanet atmospheres and a radiometric instrument model, we have generated synthetic observational data to explore how well the major C- and O-bearing chemical species (CO, CO2, CH4, and H2O),…
The physical characteristics and atmospheric chemical composition of newly discovered exoplanets are often inferred from their transit spectra which are obtained from complex numerical models of radiative transfer. Alternatively, simple…
Hot Jupiters are very good targets for transmission spectroscopy analysis. Their atmospheres have a large scale height implying a high signal to noise ratio. As these planets orbit close to their stars, they often present strong thermal and…
This dissertation as a whole aims to provide means to better understand hot-Jupiter planets through observing, performing thermochemical calculations, and modeling their atmospheres. We used Spitzer multi-wavelength secondary-eclipse…
Characterization of exoplanets has matured in recent years, particularly through studies of exoplanetary atmospheres of transiting planets at infra-red wavelenegths. The primary source for such observations has been the Spitzer Space…
With high-resolution spectroscopy we can study exoplanet atmospheres and learn about their chemical composition, temperature profiles, and presence of clouds and winds, mainly in hot, giant planets. State-of-the-art instrumentation is…
Upcoming space-based coronagraphic instruments in the next decade will perform reflected light spectroscopy and photometry of cool, directly imaged extrasolar giant planets. We are developing a new atmospheric retrieval methodology to help…
A key goal of exoplanet spectroscopy is to measure atmospheric properties, such as abundances of chemical species, in order to connect them to our understanding of atmospheric physics and planet formation. In this new era of high-quality…
We have investigated the information content in reflected-starlight spectra of exoplanets. We specify our analysis to Barnard's Star b candidate super-Earth, for which we assume a radius 0.6 times that of Neptune, an atmosphere dominated by…
Characterizing the atmospheres of extrasolar planets is the new frontier in exoplanetary science. The last two decades of exoplanet discoveries have revealed that exoplanets are very common and extremely diverse in their orbital and bulk…
Transit spectroscopy is a powerful tool to decode the chemical composition of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. In this paper we focus on unsupervised techniques for analyzing spectral data from transiting exoplanets. We demonstrate…
The absorption and emission of light by exoplanet atmospheres encode details of atmospheric composition, temperature, and dynamics. Fundamentally, simulating these processes requires detailed knowledge of the opacity of gases within an…
Space telescopes such as EChO (Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory) and JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) will be important for the future study of extrasolar planet atmospheres. Both of these missions are capable of performing high…
With a scheduled launch in October 2018, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to revolutionise the field of atmospheric characterization of exoplanets. The broad wavelength coverage and high sensitivity of its instruments will…
We propose a method to distinguish between cloudy, hazy and clearsky (free of clouds and hazes) exoplanet atmospheres that could be applicable to upcoming large aperture space and ground-based telescopes such as the James Webb Space…
A publicly available database of opacities for molecules of astrophysical interest, ExoMolOP, has been compiled for over 80 species, based on the latest line list data from the ExoMol, HITEMP and MoLLIST databases. These data are generally…
Understanding a planet's atmosphere is a necessary condition for understanding not only the planet itself, but also its formation, structure, evolution, and habitability, This puts a premium on obtaining spectra, and developing credible…
Standard Bayesian retrievals for exoplanet atmospheric parameters from transmission spectroscopy, while well understood and widely used, are generally computationally expensive. In the era of the JWST and other upcoming observatories,…
The mass and distribution of metals in the interiors of exoplanets are essential for constraining their formation and evolution processes. Nevertheless, with only masses and radii measured, the determination of exoplanet interior structures…