Thursday, June 12 - Plenary Session

Name:  Guillem Anglada-Escude

Affiliation:  Queen Mary University of London

Title:  Planetary Systems Around Cool Stars : a Window Towards Characterization of Small Planets

Abstract:
Due to their favourable mass-radius ratios, current technical means enable characterization of the bulk properties of small planets around low-mass stars efficiently. I will review the current techniques to detect them and the unique opportunities they offer for follow-up. This includes Doppler spectroscopy, photometric transits, gravitational microlensing, direct imaging and astrometry. The same way as hot-Jupiters paved the road on the first years of exoplanet discoveries, dedicated programs to detect and characterize hot Earths and super-Earths are the natural step towards (near) future characterization of potentially habitable worlds. These studies show that detailed knowledge of the stars and their physics is needed to correctly interpret exoplanet observations, even at their most basic level (Doppler, photometric and spectroscopic observables). An explosion of detections using the last two techniques (imaging and astrometry) is expected in the next few years opening up a new region of the parameter space for exploration. I will end-up with an overview of new instruments coming on-line, and present what trends in the exoplanet populations are suggested by recent studies.