Princeton University Extrasolar Planet Discussion Group

The demography of young and mature exoplanets is crucial to understanding the full picture of planetary system formation and evolution. In this talk, I will highlight two observational approaches that expand the exoplanet demographic census. In the first approach, I focus on understanding the evolutionary history of hot jupiters by estimating the occurrence rate of their inner companion planets through a systematic search of TESS, Kepler, and K2 light curves. My search yielded the TOI-2000 system and recovered most known hot jupiter inner companions, confirming that these systems are indeed intrinsically rare. I will discuss the implication this rarity has on the formation mechanisms of hot jupiters. In the second approach, I focus on searching for young planets in nearby open clusters, which allow us to test hypotheses on their dynamical evolution and migration by comparison to more mature systems. Gaia spatio-kinematic data have revealed diffuse and extended structures known as tidal tails in nearby open clusters, but many of these structures lack independent verification. My pilot study used TESS to measure stellar rotation periods in the 120 Myr old nearby open cluster Blanco 1, and, by comparing the gyrochrone sequence of the core and tidal tail stars, yielded the first independent verification of the reality and extent of its recently discovered tidal tails. The tidal tails more than double the membership of Blanco 1, pointing to a viable strategy to enhance the local young star census and broaden the search targets for young exoplanets.