Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

The evolution of planets and planetary systems depends on the environments created by their host stars in a number of ways.  In this talk, I will discuss several observable impacts of stellar winds, radiation pressure, and non-thermal ionizing radiation on these systems.  First, I will discuss recent work on photoionization-driven atmospheric escape from metal-rich planetary atmospheres and present a new proposed observational signature of gas lost from hot Jupiters that may be retained in tori around host stars with weak stellar winds.  Second, we show that for highly-irradiated, low-gravity planets, stellar radiation pressure significantly alters the size distribution of atmospheric haze particles, changing the scattering slope in atmospheric transmission spectra.  Finally, we propose that the moving clumps of material observed in scattered light in AU Mic’s debris disk may arise from periodic inclination excitation of small grains by an embedded planet, followed by ejection due to the stellar wind.