Related papers: The Future of Evolved Planetary Systems
Planetary materials orbiting white dwarf stars reveal the ultimate fate of the planets of the Solar System and all known transiting exoplanets. Observed metal pollution and infrared excesses from debris disks support that planetary systems…
The space density of white dwarfs is highly uncertain even nearby. This results from the fact that the known sample of white dwarfs is largely incomplete in part because most white dwarfs have been discovered as by-products in non-dedicated…
Exoplanets have been detected around stars at various stages of their lives, ranging from young stars emerging from formation, to latter stages of evolution, including white dwarfs and neutron stars. Post main sequence stellar evolution can…
Started approximately in the late 1980s, exoplanetology has up to now unveiled the main gross bulk characteristics of planets and planetary systems. In the future it will benefit from more and more large telescopes and advanced space…
By the 2040s, the exoplanet field will have moved from the discovery of a few thousand planets to hundreds of thousands, thanks to Gaia DR5, TESS, PLATO, Roman, and their successors. At that stage, the key bottleneck will no longer be…
The detection and characterization of protoplanets in protoplanetary disks around young stars is emerging as a transformative field that will redefine our understanding of how planetary systems form. While current facilities have revealed…
Planetary systems that orbit white dwarf stars can be studied via spectroscopic observations of the stars themselves. Numerous white dwarfs are seen to have accreted mostly rocky minor planets, the remnants of which are present in the…
Priorities in exo-planet research are rapidly moving from finding planets to characterizing their physical properties. Of key importance is their chemical composition, which feeds back into our understanding of planet formation. For the…
In the course of their evolution, white-dwarf stars go through at least one phase of variability in which the global pulsations they undergo allow astronomers to peer into their interiors, this way making possible to shed light on their…
The Kepler, K2 and TESS transit surveys are revolutionizing our understanding of planets orbiting close to their host stars and our understanding of exoplanet systems in general, but there remains a gap in our understanding of wide-orbit…
The direct images of giant extrasolar planets recently obtained around several main sequence stars represent a major step in the study of planetary systems. These high-dynamic range images are among the most striking results obtained by the…
The growth of luminous structures and the building blocks of life in the Universe began as primordial gas was processed in stars and mixed at galactic scales. The mechanisms responsible for this development are not well understood and have…
Exoplanetary science is on the verge of an unprecedented revolution. The thousands of exoplanets discovered over the past decade have most recently been supplemented by discoveries of potentially habitable planets around nearby low-mass…
As the panel on Planetary Systems and Star Formation (PSF) is fully aware, the next decade will see major advances in our understanding of these areas of research. To quote from their charge, these advances will occur in studies of solar…
Within ten years, the era of large-scale systematics surveys will decay thanks to a complete census of exoplanetary systems within 200 pc from the Sun. With the first Lights foreseen between 2024 and 2028, the new generation of extremely…
Advancements in our understanding of exoplanetary atmospheres, from massive gas giants down to rocky worlds, depend on the constructive challenges between observations and models. We are now on a clear trajectory for improvements in…
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the community studying the effect of ultraviolet radiation environment, predominantly set by OB stars, on protoplanetary disc evolution and planet formation. This is important because a…
Gaia will identify several 1e5 white dwarfs, most of which will be in the solar neighborhood at distances of a few hundred parsecs. Ground-based optical follow-up spectroscopy of this sample of stellar remnants is essential to unlock the…
The sheer number of pulsars discovered by the SKA, in combination with the exceptional timing precision it can provide, will revolutionize the field of pulsar astrophysics. The SKA will provide a complete census of pulsars in both the…
Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…