Nikku Madhusudhan - November 18, 2016

Chemical Characterization of Extrasolar Planets

Exoplanetary discoveries in the past two decades have unveiled an astonishing
diversity in the physical characteristics of  exoplanetary systems, including their
orbital properties, masses, radii, equilibrium temperatures, and stellar hosts.
Exoplanets known today range from gas-giants to nearly Earth-size planets, and
some even in the habitable zones of their host stars. Recent advances in
exoplanet observations and theoretical methods are now leading to unprecedented
constraints on the physicochemical properties of exoplanetary atmospheres,
interiors, and their formation conditions. I will discuss the latest developments
and future prospects of this new era of exoplanetary characterization. In
particular, I will present some of the latest constraints on atmospheric chemical
compositions of exoplanets, made possible by state-of-the-art high-precision
observations from space and ground, and their implications for atmospheric
processes and formation conditions of exoplanets. The emerging framework for using
atmospheric elemental abundance ratios for constraining the origins and migration
pathways of giant exoplanets, e.g. hot Jupiters, will also be discussed. A survey
of theoretical and observational directions in the field will be presented along
with several open questions on the horizon.