Prof Suzanne Aigrain

Abstract:

The radii of small exoplanets form two populations, super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, separated by a gap known as the radius valley. This could be produced by the removal of some atmospheres by stellar or internal heating, or the lack of an initial envelope. We use transit photometry and radial velocity measurements to detect and characterize four exoplanets orbiting LHS 1903, a red dwarf star in the Milky Way's thick disk. The planets have orbital periods from 2.2 to 29.3 days, and span the radius valley within a single planetary system. The derived densities indicate that LHS 1903 b is rocky, while LHS 1903 c and LHS 1903 d have extended atmospheres. The most distant planet from the host star, LHS 1903 e, has no gaseous envelope, indicating it formed from gas-depleted material.

Abstract:

The young TOI-451 planetary system, aged 125 Myr, provides a unique opportunity to test theories of planetary internal structures and atmospheric mass-loss through examination of its three transiting planets. We present an exhaustive photometric and spectroscopic follow-up to determine the orbital and physical properties of the system. We perform multidimensional Gaussian Process regression with the code pyaneti on spectroscopic time-series and NGTS/LCO light curves to disentangle the stellar and planetary signal in ESPRESSO radial velocities. We show how contemporaneous photometry serves as an activity indicator to inform RV modelling within a multidimensional Gaussian Processes framework. We argue that this can be exploited when spectroscopic observations are adversely affected by low signal-to-noise and/or poor sampling. We estimate the Doppler semi-amplitudes of , , and . This translates in 2 mass estimates for TOI-451 b and d of and ; as well as a mass upper limit for TOI-451 c of . The derived planetary properties suggest that planets c and d contain significant hydrogen-rich envelopes. The inferred parameters of TOI-451 b are consistent with either a rocky world that still retains a small hydrogen envelope or a water world. These insights make the TOI-451 system an ideal laboratory for future follow-up studies aimed at measuring atmospheric compositions, detecting atmospheric mass-loss signatures, and further exploring planetary formation and evolution processes.