Research Group: Astronomy Unit
Number of Students: 1
Length of Study in Years: 4 years
Full-time Project: yes

Project Description

While we have detected over 4000 planets around old main-sequence stars like our Sun, we have only discovered a handful of planetary systems around young stars with ages less than a few hundred million years. These young planetary systems are very important, however, as they directly link our theories of planet formation and early evolution to the older exoplanet population. In doing so, they offer important new insights into some of the key outstanding questions in exoplanet research. Two such questions are: (i) how do planetary systems form and evolve into the diverse population that we observe? And (ii) how does early stellar activity affect subsequent planet habitability? To help answer these questions, we can detect new young planetary systems and characterise the variability of young stars.

Young open clusters and dispersed stellar associations are groups of tens-to-thousands of stars that formed together and hence share a common age. This makes them powerful astrophysical laboratories to probe the early evolution of both stars and the planetary systems they host. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) are two leading exoplanet transit surveys that are monitoring dispersed stellar associations and dense open clusters. The group at QMUL leads the NGTS clusters survey and a dedicated TESS programme designed to detect new young transiting planets and characterise the effect of early stellar activity on subsequent planet habitability. This PhD project will involve working with NGTS and/or TESS data to detect new young planetary systems and characterise the early evolution of stellar activity (see Figure).

There is broad scope for tuning the specific project to the interests of the student, so interested applicants are encouraged to contact Dr Edward Gillen (e.gillen@qmul.ac.uk) if they have any questions or would like to discuss any aspect of the project.

SPCS Academics: Dr Edward Gillen