A Novel Approach to Studying Planet Occurrence Across Galactic Populations
| Program ID | 19099 |
|---|---|
| Science Category | Exoplanets & Exoplanet Formation |
| Program Type | Analysis |
| Category | Small |
| Principal Investigator | Matthew Lastovka |
| PI Institution | University of Maryland, College Park |
| Co-Investigators |
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| Abstract | We propose to validate a framework that uses large galactic models to extract exoplanet demographics from the Roman Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey (GBTDS) and can account for correlated variables such as stellar age and metallicity. The Galaxy hosts many different stellar populations, all with unique distributions of ages, chemical compositions, and dynamical histories which all may affect planet occurrence. Probing these dependencies with current data is immensely challenging due to the small sample size of planets for which host population is known and tight correlations between age, chemical abundance, and kinematics. We propose a novel methodology using galactic models that would solve both of these problems. Galactic models allow us to predict proper motion distributions and luminosity functions of stars in the GBTDS fields, which, when compared to the observed distributions, can give us the fraction of stars in each population. We can also inject age and metallicity correlations into the models to account for the effects of those correlations on the occurrence rates. We will also compare different galactic models to the observed distributions from the first three season of the GBTDS to determine which model best reproduces the observed data. This framework will provide a way to study trends across galactic structure. |