Observatoire de Paris Institut national de recherche scientifique français Univerité Pierre et Marie Curie Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7

Probing Unique Regimes of Exoplanet Science with Interferometry at CHARA and VLTI

lundi 15 novembre 2021, par Tyler Gardner (University of Michigan)

Jeudi 25 novembre 2021 à 16h00 , Lieu : Salle de réunion du bâtiment 16 et Visioconférence

Current detection limits struggle to find exoplanets around hot (A/B-type) stars. Searching for planets in this regime provides crucial information on how planet occurrence rate scales with stellar mass. We are carrying out an interferometric survey to discover au-regime giant planets via differential astrometry orbiting individual stars of sub-arcsecond binary systems. The combination of milli-arcsecond resolution with stable wavelength calibration provides precision at the few tens of micro-arcsecond level in short observations at CHARA/MIRCX and VLTI/GRAVITY. This allows us to detect the wobble of a star from orbiting companions down to a few Jupiter masses. I will present the status of our survey, including newly detected tertiary stellar companions. We show that we are beginning to probe down to planetary masses. I am also involved with efforts to measure the orbit-dependent spectra of "hot Jupiter"-type exoplanets with interferometry, which can place useful constraints on atmosphere circulation models. I will present our first promising candidate detection, along with prospects for the future of characterizing close-in exoplanets with this technique.