[P-AE16] Exoplanets

[PAE16-01] Exploring New Worlds: An Integrative, Probabilistic Analysis of Nearby Exoplanets and Exoplanetary Systems

★Invited Papers

*Daniel Apai¹ (1.The University of Arizona)

Keywords:Exoplanets

The number of known exoplanets is growing rapidly, opening a new era in astronomy, planetary science, and astrobiology. Yet, the detailed characterization of individual — and likely very complex — worlds will remain challenging: Even with future, ambitious space missions only limited information can be gained about a modest number of parameters. Some properties that likely impact the potential for habitability will remain not directly observable. While measurements of individual exoplanets and systems will be incomplete and will often carry significant uncertainties, our understanding of the exoplanet population and planet formation/evolution pathways deepens, opening an opportunity to enhance our interpretation of measurements of individual planets and systems.

In this talk I will describe a statistical framework that combines necessarily incomplete and somewhat uncertain measurements of individual planets and planetary systems with population-level statistical information (from exoplanet demographics and planet formation/evolution models), to provide a statistical, probabilistic assessment of nearby planetary systems. I will show how this approach can successfully predict the presence and properties of yet-undiscovered worlds in nearby multi-planet systems, such as tau Ceti, and how it can enhance the efficiency of next-generation, space-based direct imaging survey missions in their quest to characterize habitable worlds and identify biosignatures.