[工程科技]A theoretical look at the direct detection of giant planets outside the Solar System.pdfVIP

A theoretical look at the direct detection of giant planets outside the Solar System Adam Burrows Department of Astronomy, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 5 0 0 e-mail: aburrows@ 2 n a J I. HEADING 2 2 Astronomy is at times a science of unexpected discovery. When it is, and if we 1 v 4 are lucky, new intellectual territories emerge to challenge our views of the cos- 8 4 mos. The recent indirect detections using high-precision Doppler spectroscopy 1 0 5 of now more than one hundred giant planets orbiting more than one hundred 0 / nearby stars is an example of such rare serendipity. What has been learned has h p - shaken our preconceptions, for none of the planetary systems discovered to date o r t is like our own. However, the key to unlocking a planet’s chemical, structural, s a : and evolutionary secrets is the direct detection of the planet’s light. I review v i X the embryonic theory of the spectra, atmospheres, and light curves of irradi- r a ated giant planets and put this theory into the context of the many proposed astronomical campaigns to image them. II. INTRODUCTION: THE NEWLY-DISCOVERED WORLDS Direct detection of an extrasolar planet requires that its dim light be separated from under the glare of its bright parent star. However, such high-contrast imaging (e.g., a part in 107−10 in the visible) has not to date been achieved. Instead, the vast majority of known extrasolar giant planets (EGPs) have been discovered from the ground using the indirect technique of high-precision stellar spectroscopy [1–3]. Due to gravitational attraction