Related papers: Detecting Outer Planets in Edge-On Orbits: Combini…
Stellar activity causes difficulties in the characterization of transiting exoplanets. Studies have been performed to quantify its impact on infrared interferometry, but not in the visible domain, which however allows reaching better…
High-contrast imaging for the detection and characterization of exoplanets relies on the instrument's capability to block out the light of the host star. Some current post-processing methods for calibrating out the residual speckles use…
High precision radial velocity (RV) measurements have been central in the study of exoplanets during the last two decades, from the early discovery of hot Jupiters, to the recent mass measurements of Earth-sized planets uncovered by transit…
Aims. We used realistic three-dimensional (3D) radiative hydrodynamical (RHD) simulations from the Stagger-grid and synthetic images computed with the radiative transfer code Optim3D to provide interferometric observables to extract the…
We compare potential state-of-the-art experiments for detecting Earth-mass planets around main-sequence stars using radial velocities, transits, astrometry, and microlensing. For conventionally-discussed signal-to-noise ratio (S/N)…
We consider the so-called Keplerian periodogram, in which the putative detectable signal is modelled by a highly non-linear Keplerian radial velocity function, appearing in Doppler exoplanetary surveys. We demonstrate that for planets on…
Since it has become possible to discovery planets orbiting nearby solar-type stars through very precise Doppler-shift measurements, the role of methods used to analyze such observations has grown significantly. The widely employed…
Using a sample of 213,713 stars from the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) survey, limited to a distance of 2 kpc from the Sun and to |z|<1 kpc, we report the detection of a velocity gradient of disc stars in the fourth quadrant, directed…
The detectability of moons of extra-solar planets is investigated, focussing on the time-of-arrival perturbation technique, a method for detecting moons of pulsar planets, and the photometric transit timing technique, a method for detecting…
Stellar activity interferes with precise radial velocity measurements and limits our ability to detect and characterize planets, particularly Earth-like planets. We introduce \aestra (Auto-Encoding STellar Radial-velocity and Activity), a…
I describe ongoing work on development of Bayesian methods for exploring periodically varying phenomena in astronomy, addressing two classes of sources: pulsars, and extrasolar planets (exoplanets). For pulsars, the methods aim to detect…
We present our search program for substellar companions using high-precision relative astronomy. Due to its orbital motion around the star, an unseen substellar companion would produce a periodic "wobble" of the host star, which is the…
We show that a space-based gravitational microlensing survey for terrestrial extra-solar planets is feasible in the near future, and could provide a nearly complete picture of the properties of planetary systems in our Galaxy. We present…
Spectral retrieval techniques are currently our best tool to interpret the observed exoplanet atmospheric data. Said techniques retrieve the optimal atmospheric components and parameters by identifying the best fit to an observed…
Many planet candidates have been detected by radial velocity variations of the primary star; they are planet candidates, because of the unknown orbit inclination. Detection of the wobble in the two other dimensions, to be measured by…
With more than 15 years since the the first radial velocity discovery of a planet orbiting a Sun-like star, the time baseline for radial velocity surveys is now extending out beyond the orbit of Jupiter analogs. The sensitivity to exoplanet…
Adaptive optics, large primary mirrors, and careful selection of target stars are the keys to ground-based imaging of extrasolar planets. Our near-IR survey is capable of identifying exoplanets of 1-10 M${_J}$ within 100 AU of young (t$<$60…
Radial-velocity planet search campaigns are now beginning to detect low-mass "Super-Earth" planets, with minimum masses M sin i < 10 M_earth. Using two independently-developed methods, we have derived detection limits from nearly four years…
We introduce a new method to infer the posterior distribution for planet occurrence rates from radial-velocity (RV) observations. The approach combines posterior samples from the analysis of individual RV datasets of several stars, using…
This year, a second generation of coronagraphs dedicated to high-contrast direct imaging of exoplanets is starting operations. Among them, SPHERE, installed at the focus of the UT3 Very Large Telescope, reaches unprecedented contrast ratios…