Related papers: Radial Velocity Detectability of Low Mass Extrasol…
Jupiter-mass planets with large semi-major axes ($a > 1.0$ AU) occur at a higher rate around evolved intermediate mass stars. There is a pronounced paucity of close-in ($a < 0.6$ AU), intermediate period ($5 < P < 100$ days), low-mass…
We report initial results from our long term search using precision radial velocities for planetary-mass companions located within a few AU of stars younger than the Sun. Based on a sample of >150 stars, we define a floor in the radial…
Radial velocity surveys are beginning to reach the time baselines required to detect Jupiter analogs, as well as sub-Saturn mass planets in close orbits. Therefore it is important to understand the sensitivity of these surveys at long…
Future generations of precise radial velocity (RV) surveys aim to achieve sensitivity sufficient to detect Earth mass planets orbiting in their stars' habitable zones. A major obstacle to this goal is astrophysical radial velocity noise…
The precise radial velocity technique is a cornerstone of exoplanetary astronomy. Astronomers measure Doppler shifts in the star's spectral features, which track the line-of/sight gravitational accelerations of a star caused by the planets…
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…
The majority of extrasolar planets discovered to date have significantly eccentric orbits, some if not all of which may have been produced through planetary migration. During this process, any planets interior to such an orbit would…
We estimate the conditions for detectability of two planets in a 2/1 mean-motion resonance from radial velocity data, as a function of their masses, number of observations and the signal-to-noise ratio. Even for a data set of the order of…
The detection of planets around very low-mass stars with the radial velocity method is hampered by the fact that these stars are very faint at optical wavelengths where the most high-precision spectrometers operate. We investigate the…
The currently feasible method of detection of Earth-mass planets is transit photometry, with detection probability decreasing with a planet's distance from the star. The existence or otherwise of short-period terrestrial planets will tell…
Several celestial bodies in co-orbital configurations exist in the solar system. However, co-orbital exoplanets have not yet been discovered. This lack may result from a degeneracy between the signal induced by co-orbital planets and other…
The recent detection of planets around very low mass stars raises the question of the formation, composition and potential habitability of these objects. We use planetary system formation models to infer the properties, in particular their…
We analyze 8 years of precise radial velocity measurements from the Keck Planet Search, characterizing the detection threshold, selection effects, and completeness of the survey. We carry out a systematic search for planets by assessing the…
The questions of how planets form and how common Earth-like planets are can be addressed by measuring the distribution of exoplanet masses and orbital periods. We report the occurrence rate of close-in planets (with orbital periods less…
Radial velocity searches for extrasolar planets have recently detected several very low mass (7-20M_Earth) planets in close orbits with periods <10 days. We consider the prospects for detecting the analogs of these planets in Galactic open…
The detection of lower mass planets now being reported via radial velocity and microlensing surveys suggests that they may be ubiquitous. If missions such as Kepler are able to confirm this, the detection and study of rocky planets via…
We investigate an in-situ formation scenario for Earth-mass terrestrial planets in short-period, potentially habitable orbits around low-mass stars (M_star < 0.3 M_sun). We then investigate the feasibility of detecting these Earth-sized…
Future surveys for transiting extrasolar planets, including the space-based mission Kepler (Borucki et al 2003), are expected to detect hundreds of Jovian mass planets and tens of terrestrial mass planets. For many of these newly discovered…
Searches for planets via gravitational lensing have focused on cases in which the projected separation, a, between planet and star is comparable to the Einstein radius, R_E. This paper considers smaller orbital separations and demonstrates…
In the coming decades, research in extrasolar planets aims to advance two goals: 1) detecting and characterizing low-mass planets increasingly similar to the Earth, and 2) improving our understanding of planet formation. We present a new…