Li Zeng is visiting this week to present the Exoplanet Tea talk, at 3 PM Thursday in 54-517. Li is a postdoc at Harvard working with Stein Jacobsen on subgiant planetary interiors and exoplanet mass-radius diagrams. On Thursday, Li will tell us about planet classification from the Kepler data.

If you’re interested in meeting with Li, please add your name to the schedule: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rAx2pRgrmPUWAYcKpPGOi47EE86U4nnL…

Abstract:
The Survival Function Analysis, when applied to exoplanet data from Kepler, has revealed intriguing properties of exoplanetary systems overall. Among them, two additional cut-offs in radii were identified, at 4 Earth radii and 10 Earth radii, in addition to the gap at 2 Earth radii. Thus, we have classified all planets into 4 broad categories: rocky planets (<2 Earth radii), water worlds (2-4 Earth radii), transitional planets (4-10 Earth radii), and gas giants (>10 Earth radii). This classification seems to be consistent with the currently-available data on the mass-radius plot. Furthermore, the overall orbit distribution shows consistency with this interpretation.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.03993
https://spaceweb.mit.edu/494

http://met.voxcharta.org