Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Exoplanetary Sciences

The position is associated with the Centre for Planetary Habitability and linked to the “Galactic Recipe for Exo-Planets” (GREP) project funded by the Research Council of Norway. GREP is to take exoplanet and exoplanetary system formation modelling to the next level.

Several thousands of exoplanets have been discovered and several thousands more planets are pending confirmation. Although this high number allows for good statistical analyses of the known exoplanets and the systems they occur in, none of the systems resemble our solar system. and only a few hundreds of exoplanets can broadly be considered temperate and rocky. Consequently, the collection lacks typical inner solar system planets (i.e., Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), and the systems are commonly very compact.

Despite the numerous numerical models that have been proposed and progressively refined by the observational constraints over the past decade(s), our understanding of the observed exoplanetary diversity remains incomplete. The upcoming PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission shall detect and characterise planets smaller than twice the Earthʼs size at high parameter accuracy for planet radius and mass and system age around bright stars. The anticipation of more extended systems, although they probably will not resemble the solar system either, is challenging our standard models of planet formation. Our goal is to predict and reproduce the architecture of these exoplanetary systems and the exoplanet properties, including composition, thereby testing currently competing planet formation models against observations.

The primary responsibilities of this position involve the implementation of chemical compositions for forming exoplanets, using PLATO stars as a compositional guide. This includes assessing the distribution of specific elements during condensation in the stellar nebula, gathering elemental availability for the major rock-forming and volatile elements across planet forming disks. It specifically entails tracing the chemical composition back to dynamical models of planet formation, focusing on the building blocks and feeding zones for each forming planet. This work will build upon our previous work and shall incorporate new disc models for N-body simulations of planet formation.