Related papers: Understanding Exoplanet Habitability: A Bayesian M…
The transit method, during which a planet's presence is inferred by measuring the reduction in flux as it passes in front of its parent star, is a highly successful exoplanet detection and characterization technique. During transit, the…
Understanding planet formation requires robust population studies, which are designed to reveal trends in planet properties. In this work, we aim to determine if different methods for selecting populations of exoplanets for atmospheric…
We are entering the era of high-precision and high-resolution spectroscopy of exoplanets. Such observations herald the need for robust self-consistent spectral models of exoplanetary atmospheres to investigate intricate atmospheric…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
All life on Earth needs water. NASA's quest to follow the water links water to the search for life in the cosmos. Telescopes like JWST and mission concepts like HabEx, LUVOIR and Origins are designed to characterise rocky exoplanets…
This brief review focuses on methods and applications of modeling exoplanetary atmospheres. We discuss various kinds of state of the art self-consistent and retrieval models in 1D and multi-D with a focus on open questions and short- and…
The conventional observables to identify a habitable or inhabited environment in exoplanets, such as an ocean glint or abundant atmospheric O$_2$, will be challenging to detect with present or upcoming observatories. Here we suggest a new…
Thanks to the advances in modern instrumentation we have learned about many exoplanets that span a wide range of masses and composition. Studying their atmospheres provides insight into planetary origin, evolution, dynamics, and…
Exoplanet transmission spectra, which measure the absorption of light passing through a planet's atmosphere during transit, are most often assessed globally, resulting in a single spectrum per planetary atmosphere. However, the inherent…
One of the frontier research fields of exoplanetary science is the study of the composition and variability of exoplanetary atmospheres. This field is now moving from the gas giant planets towards the smaller and colder telluric planets,…
Observed exoplanet transit spectra are usually retrieved using 1D models to determine atmospheric composition while planetary atmospheres are 3D. With the JWST and future space telescopes such as Ariel, we will be able to obtain…
We present a retrieval method based on Bayesian analysis to infer the atmospheric compositions and surface or cloud-top pressures from transmission spectra of exoplanets with general compositions. In this study, we identify what can…
The search for habitable exoplanets and life beyond the Solar System is one of the most compelling scientific opportunities of our time. Nevertheless, the high cost of building facilities that can address this topic and the keen public…
Exoplanet transmission spectra provide rich information about the chemical composition, clouds and temperature structure of exoplanet atmospheres. Most exoplanet transmission spectra only span infrared wavelengths ($\gtrsim$ 1 $\rm{\mu…
Direct measurements of the spectra of extrasolar giant planets are the keys to determining their physical and chemical nature. The goal of theory is to provide the tools and context with which such data are understood. It is only by putting…
We describe work in progress by a collaboration of astronomers and statisticians developing a suite of Bayesian data analysis tools for extrasolar planet (exoplanet) detection, planetary orbit estimation, and adaptive scheduling of…
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),…
Atmospheric retrieval determines the properties of an atmosphere based on its measured spectrum. The low signal-to-noise ratio of exoplanet observations require a Bayesian approach to determine posterior probability distributions of each…
The determination of atmospheric structure and molecular abundances of planetary atmospheres via spectroscopy involves direct comparisons between models and data. While varying in sophistication, most model-spectra comparisons fundamentally…
Understanding of clouds is instrumental in interpreting current and future spectroscopic observations of exoplanets. Modelling clouds consistently is complex, since it involves many facets of chemistry, nucleation theory, condensation…