Exploring the Architecture of Exoplanet Systems

While there are now almost 6000 known exoplanets, most of these reside in very short period orbits. Probing exoplanets in wider orbits will help put our Solar System into context and allow us to study the full architecture of exoplanet systems.

The European Space Agency Gaia mission is currently creating a precise three-dimensional map of more than a billion stars throughout our Milky Way galaxy. As it does this, Gaia maps the motion of stars to a precision that will allow for the detection of long period exoplanets to be discovered. By combining these new discoveries with the currently known exoplanets from transit and radial velocity surveys, we can, for the first time, study complete exoplanet systems.

In this PhD project, we will use new Gaia data to study the outer regions of stars already known to host exoplanets from transit and radial velocity surveys. We will investigate the links between the inner and outer exoplanets to see if the systems are like our own Solar System, or if there are other global features that are not seen in our Solar System. The project will involve starting new transit and radial velocity searches for exoplanets around stars that show outer planets from the Gaia data. The project will also involve simulating the dynamics of the newly discovered exoplanet systems to understand how the systems may evolve over time.

The PhD project will involve using data from ESA's Gaia mission, NASA's TESS mission, and ESO's data archive. In addition, the student will lead telescope proposals for new observations on facilities such as ESO's VLT and 3.6m telescopes.

The goal of the PhD will be to discover some of the first complete exoplanet systems and find insights into how these systems may form and evolve. The project will suit a student curious to study exoplanet systems and keen to use large space-based observational data sets for this task.

Please contact d.bayliss@warwick.ac.uk for more information or if you have any questions.