Speaker: Amaury Triaud, School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Birmingham

Title: The Plurality of Worlds

Abstract: Many physical processes co-exist during planet assembly and during planetary migration, and few observables provide an unambiguous view of what results from planet formation. I will describe new means to investigate the processes happening at formation, by changing perspective, by looking at the problem from a new vantage point. We will investigate planets away from single Sun-like stars, and observe what results from formation in systems are that different. Amongst those are ultra-cool dwarfs, and binary stars.

Physical processes are validated when they are tested over orders of magnitude.  Thanks to discoveries like TRAPPIST-1 we can finally witness the outcome of planet formation in regimes that had remained unexplored before. I will describe our efforts discovering planets around the smallest stars, work that also bears deep consequence on the search for life elsewhere.

Directly matching the physical and orbital properties of planets orbiting single stars, to those of circumbinary planets has the potential to test what we think we know about planet formation. I will describe our efforts to establish a systematic survey to seek circumbinary planets using ground-based facilities, and show the results of a preliminary survey.