Related papers: Detecting relevant dependencies under measurement …
We take a different look at the problem of testing the independence of two metric-space-valued random variables using the distance correlation. Instead of testing if the distance correlation vanishes exactly, we are interested in the…
Correlations between planetary and stellar properties, particularly age, can provide insight on planetary formation and evolution processes. However, the underlying source of such trends can be unclear, and measurement uncertainties and…
The magnetic activity of planet-hosting stars is an important factor to estimate the atmospheric stability of close-in exoplanets and the age of their host stars. It has long been speculated that close-in exoplanets can influence the…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
Recently Knutson et al. (2010) have demonstrated a correlation between the presence of temperature inversions in the atmospheres of hot Jupiters, and the chromospheric activity levels of the host stars. Here we show that there is also a…
We use Monte Carlo simulations to estimate the number of extrasolar planets that are directly detectable in the solar-neighborhood using current and forthcoming high-contrast imaging instruments. Our calculations take into account the…
A handful of planetary systems hosting a Hot Jupiter have been subsequently found to also host long-period giant planets. These ``cold Jupiters,'' giant planets residing beyond the snow line ($\sim$3\,au), play an important role in the…
With about 700 confirmed extrasolar planets, it is time to move beyond discovery and towards characterization. Perhaps the most basic parameter of an extrasolar planet is its mass; however, this is very difficult to determine if the planet…
A significant fraction of hot Jupiters have orbital axes misaligned with their host stars' spin axes. The large stellar obliquities of these giants have long been considered potential signatures of high-eccentricity migration, which is…
Recent observations have indicated a strong connection between compact ($a \lesssim 0.5$ au) super-Earth and mini-Neptune systems and their outer ($a \gtrsim$ a few au) giant planet companions. We study the dynamical evolution of such inner…
Inferring the properties of exoplanets from their atmospheres, while confronting low resolution and low signal-to-noise in the context of the quantities we want to derive, poses rigorous demands upon the data collected from observation.…
We investigate whether magnetic interaction between close-in giant planets and their host stars produce observable statistical enhancements in stellar coronal or chromospheric activity. New Chandra observations of 12 nearby (d<60 pc)…
Astrophysical false positives due to stellar eclipsing binaries pose one of the greatest challenges to ground-based surveys for transiting Hot Jupiters. We have used known properties of multiple star systems and Hot Jupiter systems to…
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…
In the context of the space-based mission CoRoT, devoted to asteroseismology and search for planet transits, we analyse the accuracy of fundamental stellar parameters (mass, radius, luminosity) that can be obtained from asteroseismological…
Provided that sufficient resources are deployed, we can look forward to an extraordinary future in which we will characterize potentially habitable planets. Until now, we have had to base interpretations of observations on habitability…
We propose a method to overcome the usual limitation of current data processing techniques in optical and infrared long-baseline interferometry: most reduction pipelines assume uncorrelated statistical errors and ignore systematics. We use…
The classical picture of our Solar System being the archetypal outcome of planet formation has been rendered obsolete by the astonishing diversity of extrasolar-system architectures. From rare hot-Jupiters to abundant super-Earths and…
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…
We show that short-term perturbations among massive planets in multiple planet systems can result in radial velocity variations of the central star which differ substantially from velocity variations derived assuming the planets are…