Description:

Title:  High-Contrast Exoplanet Surveys: from Images to Spectra

Speaker: Tim Brandt, Institute for Advanced Study

Host: Vicky Kalogera

Abstract: Advances in adaptive optics and infrared instrumentation have allowed us to see young exoplanets millions of times fainter than their host stars at separations corresponding to the outer Solar system. Large surveys, including one by the international SEEDS collaboration, have searched for massive planets around a total of about 1000 stars. As I will show, the results of these surveys suggest that we are approaching the contrasts and separations needed to see young planets formed by core-accretion. Now, simple cameras are being replaced by integral-field spectrographs, and adaptive optics systems are being dramatically upgraded. Instruments like the CHARIS integral-field spectrograph for the Subaru telescope will improve our sensitivity to faint exoplanets while simultaneously allowing us to characterize their atmospheres in much more detail. All of these upgrades, particularly the transition from images to spectra, bring new and unsolved challenges in data analysis. I will give an overview of these challenges and the techniques we are developing to overcome them. We are now planning a two-year CHARIS survey to begin in early 2017. It will obtain low-resolution spectra of young giant planets, and will search about 100-150 stars for faint companions at separations as small as 0.1--0.2 arcseconds.

Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, Astrophysics