Understanding the Architecture of Complete Planetary Systems

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Astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets: planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. My research goal is to study in-depth some of the known exoplanet systems to understand the processes that lead to their current orbital architectures, then use that understanding to build a Planetary System Population Simulator to make statistically sound conclusions about the prevalence and importance, generally, of these formation processes for planetary systems as a whole. Most known exoplanetary systems have very different orbital architectures than our own Solar System. This is partially because exoplanets with certain characteristics (e.g. faster orbits, larger planets) are easier to find with telescopes. To compare exoplanets with our own Solar System, these observational biases need to be accounted for. This proposal will lead to training for several HQP in Canada, and will benefit the astronomy community by providing a "de-biased" distribution of complete planetary systems. This research goal will be met through several studies: The Gemini Planet Imager will take images of several dusty planetary systems where recent catastrophic collisions are believed to have taken place between asteroids or even planets. These images will be complimented by computer simulations studying the stability of close-in planets and asteroid belts. Some theorize that our Solar System could have started out with a set of close-in planets that have since been destroyed through collisions, so these dusty systems could be similar to earlier stages of our Solar System's evolution. The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope will be used to discover more objects in the Kuiper Belt, which is made up of thousands of small, icy trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) that orbit beyond Neptune. The orbits of discovered TNOs best match simulations of the early Solar System where the planets migrate outwards to their orbits today. I'll focus on TNOs with orbits that are inclined to the orbital plane of the Solar System planets, as these are most strongly affected by planetary migration, and by theorized distant planets like "Planet 9." The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will start taking data within the next 3 years, and is expected to discover thousands more TNOs as it images the entire southern hemisphere sky every 3-4 days. Significant modelling will be required to measure the orbits of newly discovered TNOs, and software will need to be developed to effectively comb through the many Terabytes of data produced each night. The Planetary System Population Simulator is software that will statistically produce realistic distributions of exoplanetary systems based on known observational biases and real observed systems. The end-result of this software will allow statistical comparison of our Solar System's planetary architecture with the thousands of exoplanetary system architectures discovered to date, and will place our Solar System's formation and architecture in broader context.