Estimation of the XUV Radiation Onto Close Planets and Their Evaporation⋆
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Lurking in the Shadows: Wide-Separation Gas Giants As Tracers of Planet Formation
Lurking in the Shadows: Wide-Separation Gas Giants as Tracers of Planet Formation Thesis by Marta Levesque Bryan In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Pasadena, California 2018 Defended May 1, 2018 ii © 2018 Marta Levesque Bryan ORCID: [0000-0002-6076-5967] All rights reserved iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I would like to thank Heather Knutson, who I had the great privilege of working with as my thesis advisor. Her encouragement, guidance, and perspective helped me navigate many a challenging problem, and my conversations with her were a consistent source of positivity and learning throughout my time at Caltech. I leave graduate school a better scientist and person for having her as a role model. Heather fostered a wonderfully positive and supportive environment for her students, giving us the space to explore and grow - I could not have asked for a better advisor or research experience. I would also like to thank Konstantin Batygin for enthusiastic and illuminating discussions that always left me more excited to explore the result at hand. Thank you as well to Dimitri Mawet for providing both expertise and contagious optimism for some of my latest direct imaging endeavors. Thank you to the rest of my thesis committee, namely Geoff Blake, Evan Kirby, and Chuck Steidel for their support, helpful conversations, and insightful questions. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Brendan Bowler. His talk at Caltech my second year of graduate school introduced me to an unexpected population of massive wide-separation planetary-mass companions, and lead to a long-running collaboration from which several of my thesis projects were born. -
Prospects of Detecting the Polarimetric Signature of the Earth-Mass Planet Α Centauri B B with SPHERE/ZIMPOL
A&A 556, A64 (2013) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201321881 & c ESO 2013 Astrophysics Prospects of detecting the polarimetric signature of the Earth-mass planet α Centauri B b with SPHERE/ZIMPOL J. Milli1,2, D. Mouillet1,D.Mawet2,H.M.Schmid3, A. Bazzon3, J. H. Girard2,K.Dohlen4, and R. Roelfsema3 1 Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG), University Joseph Fourier, CNRS, BP 53, 38041 Grenoble, France e-mail: [email protected] 2 European Southern Observatory, Casilla 19001, Santiago 19, Chile 3 Institute for Astronomy, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland 4 Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM),13388 Marseille, France Received 12 May 2013 / Accepted 4 June 2013 ABSTRACT Context. Over the past five years, radial-velocity and transit techniques have revealed a new population of Earth-like planets with masses of a few Earth masses. Their very close orbit around their host star requires an exquisite inner working angle to be detected in direct imaging and sets a challenge for direct imagers that work in the visible range, such as SPHERE/ZIMPOL. Aims. Among all known exoplanets with less than 25 Earth masses we first predict the best candidate for direct imaging. Our primary objective is then to provide the best instrument setup and observing strategy for detecting such a peculiar object with ZIMPOL. As a second step, we aim at predicting its detectivity. Methods. Using exoplanet properties constrained by radial velocity measurements, polarimetric models and the diffraction propaga- tion code CAOS, we estimate the detection sensitivity of ZIMPOL for such a planet in different observing modes of the instrument. -