Related papers: Polarization statistics of extra-solar systems
We investigate the linear polarization produced by interstellar dust aligned by the magnetic field in the solar neighborhood (d< 50 pc). We also look for intrinsic effects from circumstellar processes, specifically in terms of polarization…
Directly imaged planets are self-luminous companions of pre-main sequence and young main sequence stars. They reside in wider orbits ($\sim10\mathrm{s}-1000\mathrm{s}$~AU) and generally are more massive compared to the close-in ($\lesssim…
New observations of 9 of the brightest northern O stars have been made with the Breger polarimeter on the 0.9~m telescope at McDonald Observatory and the AnyPol polarimeter on the 0.4~m telescope at Limber Observatory, using the…
We present initial results measuring the companion fraction of metal-poor stars ([Fe/H]$<-$2.0). We are employing the Lick Observatory planet-finding system to make high-precision Doppler observations of these objects. The binary fraction…
Population of levels of the hyperfine and fine split ground state of an atom is affected by radiative transitions induced by anisotropic radiation flux. Such aligned atoms precess in the external magnetic field and this affects properties…
Imaging of planets is very difficult, due to the glare from their nearby, much brighter suns. Static and slowly-evolving aberrations are the limiting factors, even after application of adaptive optics. The residual speckle pattern is highly…
The detection of massive planets orbiting nearby stars has become almost routine, but current techniques are as yet unable to detect terrestrial planets with masses comparable to the Earth's. Future space-based observatories to detect…
We determine the orbital eccentricities of individual small Kepler planets, through a combination of asteroseismology and transit light-curve analysis. We are able to constrain the eccentricities of 51 systems with a single transiting…
We investigate potential biases in the measurements of exoplanet orbital parameters obtained from radial velocity observations for single-planet systems. We create a mock catalog of radial velocity data, choosing input planet masses,…
Knowledge of late K and M dwarf metallicities can be used to guide planet searches and constrain planet formation models. However, the determination of metallicities of late-type stars is difficult because visible wavelength spectra of…
We interpret the relation between the polarizing efficiency $P_{\max}/E(B-V)$ and the wavelength of the maximum polarization $\lambda_{\max}$ observed for 17 objects (including 243 stars) separated into two groups: "dark clouds" and "open…
We investigated the impact of selected cloud condensates in exoplanetary atmospheres on the polarization of scattered stellar radiation. We considered a selection of 25 cloud condensates that are expected to be present in extrasolar…
The determination of the stellar parameters of M dwarfs is of prime importance in the fields of galactic, stellar and planetary astronomy. M stars are the least studied galactic component regarding their fundamental parameters. Yet, they…
Similar to the case of solar system planets, reflected starlight from exoplanets is expected to be polarized due to atmospheric scattering and the net disk integrated polarization should be non-zero owing to the asymmetrical illumination of…
We compare the metallicities of stars with radial velocity planets to the metallicity of a sample of field dwarfs. We confirm recent work indicating that the stars-with-planet sample as a whole is iron rich. However, the lowest mass stars…
We performed a highly sensitive search for magnetic fields on a large set of HgMn stars. With the aid of a new polarimeter attached to the HARPS spectrometer at the ESO 3.6m-telescope, we obtained high-quality circular polarization spectra…
The spin polarization (P) of high-density InSb two-dimensional electron systems (2DESs) has been measured using both parallel and tilted magnetic fields. P is found to exhibit a superlinear increase with the total field B. This P-B…
We combine the latest datasets obtained with different surveys to study the frequency dependence of polarized emission coming from Extragalactic Radio Sources (ERS). We consider data over a very wide frequency range starting from $1.4$ GHz…
Over 300 extrasolar planets have been found since 1992, showing that planetary systems are common and exhibit an outstanding variety of characteristics. As the number of detections grows and as models of planet formation progress to account…
Several recent studies have reported differences in vsini, abundance-condensation temperature trends, and chromospheric activity between samples of stars with and without Doppler-detected planets. These findings have been disputed, and the…