Exoplanet Dynamics and Counting with Confusion

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• Dr Will Meierjurgen Farr, UoB
• Thursday 02 October 2014, 13:45-15:00
• Theory Library.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Kevin Ralley.

Resonances in the long-term (secular) orbital evolution of planets are important in shaping the architecture of exoplanet systems. I will explain how one particular resonance—-the Kozai resonance—-can help produce the population of “hot Jupiter” planets. These planets are Jupiter-sized, but orbit more closely to their host stars than Mercury does to the sun. Some even orbit in a retrograde sense to their host star’s spin, an unusual orbital configuration explained by the Kozai resonance. When several secular resonances overlap, the result is chaos; I will explain how this effect produces instabilities observed in our own solar system, and some of my current work to understand how it could be active in exoplanet systems. Finally, I will discuss some recent work counting the number of Earth-like exoplanets in the Kepler satellite’s planetary data—-in the presence of severe selection effects and a confusing background of false-positive detections.

This talk is part of the Theoretical Physics Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Bham Talks
• Theoretical Physics Seminars
• Theory Library
• What's on in Physics?

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