ORCID Identifier(s)

0000-0003-0216-559X

Graduation Semester and Year

2021

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Physics and Applied Physics

Department

Physics

First Advisor

Zdzislaw Musielak

Second Advisor

Amy Kimball

Third Advisor

Bryan Butler

Abstract

Exoplanetary research has undergone a great deal of development and growth. Achievements in theoretical studies and detection techniques have led to the discovery of 4,000+ exoplanets in ~3, 000 planetary systems to date. Despite this great success, and though candidates have been proposed, the confirmation of the first exomoon is yet to be accomplished. Understanding the constraints under which extrasolar moons form around exoplanets can provide insight into the overall formation of the system, the host planet’s habitability, and could even aid the process of drawing out the best observational candidates for exomoon searches. This work entails the use of both theoretical and observational efforts to examine the potential for planetary systems to host stable exomoons that can be directly detected by modern radio telescopes. Orbital evolution studies of exomoons in stellar systems are performed to study post-massive impact scenarios of satellites around confirmed exoplanets. Results of these orbital integrations are then utilized to establish stability constraints for satellites orbiting giant exoplanets hosted by either single stars or stellar binary systems and draw candidates for radio observations. A novel radio-detection method, proposed by Noyola et al. (2014), that is based on a planet-moon interaction ob- served between the Jupiter-Io system is applied to low-frequency radio observations of confirmed exoplanet systems. The goal is to utilize Io-controlled decametric radio emissions to determine how the presence of exomoons around giant planets might be revealed by the same modulation mechanism. We analyze 325MHz observations of 3 nearby (~4.6 pc) planetary systems performed through the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT); located in Pune, India. Follow-up observations at lower frequencies (40-70MHz) are carried out with the Long Wavelength Array (LWA); with the purpose of establishing upper limits to this novel method.

Keywords

Exoplanets, exomoons, numerical analysis, orbital evolution, radio astronomy.

Disciplines

Physical Sciences and Mathematics | Physics

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

Additional Files
30208-2.zip (27111 kB)
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