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The Neptunian desert is a region of parameter space known to have few planets. Accepted theory describes it as emptied by photo evaporation and tidal disruption, either reducing a planet’s radius and moving it below the desert or disrupting planets entirely. Recent discoveries from the TESS satellite have shown that planets exist inside the desert, and demonstrated a surprising lack of clear boundaries in the distribution of planetary candidates. I will present a new research program aimed at statistically deriving the occurrence rate of planets in and near the desert, not just in planet radius but in mass and density. The results of this study will open up investigations into the formation and evolution processes leading to these rare planets, and test our understanding of processes like photo evaporation. In this talk I will describe the planned methodology, including a machine learning pipeline to validate planetary candidates statistically, as well as results from two pilot radial velocity followup programs with the HARPS spectrograph.
David Armstrong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Warwick in 2015. He's the STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow. His research interests are in the areas of transiting exoplanets, planetary cores and interiors, and astrophysical machine learning for tasks such as exoplanet vetting and validation, and variable star classification.
Place: N630
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