Exoplanet Astrophysics

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Among the billions of potential planetary systems in our galaxy, only one planet is currently known to host life: the Earth. Understanding the formation and evolution of planets, such as the Earth is fundamental towards answering, Are we alone in the Universe? one of the greatest unsolved questions in science. The research proposed to the Canada Research Chair program will address this question through instrumentation, observations, and interpretation. With a goal of precision bulk measurements of exoplanet planetary properties to understand the pathways of exoplanet evolution and ultimately understand how Earth-like planets form.Over the past few decades, our knowledge of exoplanets has blossomed from the discovery of the first planet beyond our solar system to detailed occurrence rates and precision characterization of host stars, mass, radius, orbit, and bulk density. There is now concrete evidence that there are more planets in the galaxy than stars and observations have revealed an incredible diversity of basic exoplanet properties. The field of exoplanet is about to enter a Golden era of discovery. New instruments and facilities such as the NIRISS instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will provide unprecedented infrared measurements of exoplanets that will reveal new insights into atmospheric chemistry and potential fingerprints of evolutionary pathways, such as orbital migration or the sculpting of atmosphere from external forces such as evaporation or collisions. Dr. Rowe will provide leadership over the next 5-years though the development of a new low-cost space mission as PI of the Canadian POET exoplanet mission, Co-I for NASA New Frontiers Pandora mission and enabling exoplanet science for the proposed Canadian flagship CASTOR. These missions will provide unique observations to measure atmospheric particle scattering, stellar activity and its impact on atmospheric retrieval, long-base line transit timing to assess planet dynamics and precision photometry to discover potential Earth-like planets around ultra-cool stars. Dr. Rowe has guaranteed access to JWST as member of the Canadian NIRISS GTO Team and from successful competition for JWST GO-time. This work is a direct continuation of his research program to obtain and interpret measurements of mass, radius, atmosphere, incident flux, composition, and evolution for a large sample of planets spanning the Earth to super-Earth to mini-Neptune regime.