I study extrasolar planets using the technique of astrometry. I am particularly interested in the transition region between planets and brown dwarfs. Those have overlapping mass ranges and understanding their formation and evolution requires comprehensive observational characterisation and the study of a large number of objects.
Planets and brown dwarfs orbiting Sun-like and red stars

Orbital motion of GJ 676A as a function of time. The orbital signature due to its planet is shown in Right Ascension (left) and Declination (right).
Planets orbiting brown dwarfs
To explore the unknown occurrence of planets around the lowest mass stars and brown dwarfs, I am leading an astrometric planet search around 20 M/L-transition dwarfs using the FORS2 camera at the ESO VLT (Sahlmann et al. 2014). These are faint optical sources and therefore difficult to study with high-precision. We discovered two brown dwarf binary systems at 20 pc distance, for which we could constrain the masses and/or ages of the components. Systems like this are rare and important to further our understanding of brown dwarfs in a mass range shared with the most massive planets. I used the unprecedented accuracy (~100 micro-arcsecond residual dispersion) of our survey to show that super-Jupiter planets are rare around M/L-dwarfs and I am now following up on several planet candidates with enough sensitivity to discover Neptune-mass planets.

Astrometric motion of an L2+L6 ultracool binary discovered in our survey. Panel a shows proper and parallactic motion in the sky plane. Panel b is a close-up of the photocentric orbit of the binary. Observations with uncertainties and the best-fit model are shown as black circles and grey curve. From Sahlmann et al. 2015.
Gaia’s exoplanet yield
Thanks to its all-sky survey with extreme astrometric precision, the Gaia mission will discover thousands of giant planets around single stars. This prediction is solid because we have reasonable knowledge of the occurrence rates of those planets. In contrast, the abundance and properties of planets orbiting binary stars – circumbinary planets – are largely unknown because they are difficult to detect with currently available techniques. Results from the Kepler satellite and other studies indicate a minimum occurrence rate of circumbinary giant planets of about 10 per cent, yet only a handful are presently known.
I simulated the Gaia survey of nearby binary stars and showed that Gaia may discover hundreds of giant planets around binaries with FGK-dwarf primaries and that Gaia is critically sensitive to the properties of giant circumbinary planets, including their mutual inclinations and occurrence as a function of stellar mass and evolutionary state (Sahlmann, Triaud & Martin 2015).
You must be logged in to post a comment.