Detection and Characterization of sub-Jovian Planets with NGTS (Next Generation Transit Survey)

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NGTS (Next Generation Transit Survey) is an ambitious new ground-based transit survey built to discover small gaseous exoplanets as well as large super-earths around bright stars. NGTS will detect several hundred gaseous planets around stars brighter than 13 V mag, which allows for their bulk characterization. NGTS consists of 12 telescopes set-up by an international consortium and located on ESO ground at Paranal, Chile. NGTS has seen first light in 2015 and is now obtaining data on a regular basis. The prime objective of this proposal is to gain insights into the formation and evolution of small gaseous planets using NGTS data. For this purpose, we aim to empirically asses the occurrence rate of planets with sizes between Jupiter and Neptune. We will focus on planets around K type stars and compare the occurrence rates to planets around other stellar types. Dependencies on orbital period, planetary bulk parameters, stellar type, stellar insolation and metallicity will be a focus of this study. We further plan to obtain better constraints on the border of the sub Jovian desert based on empirical NGTS data, as well as analyzing the diversity of hot sub-Jovian planets. Within the NGTS Consortium we will take an active part in the planet detection and ranking, and model the light curves and radial velocity data to characterize the detected planets. In order to estimate the planet occurrence rates we will perform a detailed analysis of the planet detection efficiency of NGTS and compare our results with other surveys.The NGTS consortium consists of an international team with members located in Chile, Germany, Switzerland and UK. The applicant is co-PI of the consortium and has access to all NGTS data.