Exoplanetology has become a major topic in astronomy over the last 30 years. Exoplanets with masses between 1 Earth-mass and 10+ Jupiter-masses have been found, revealing an unexpected diversity that challenges theories of planetary systems formation and early evolution.
Yet, the regions around the stars where planets can orbit are still very partially explored. In particular, the 5-20 au region, where giant planets formed by accretion of gas on to a solid core are supposed to be predominantly found, remains barely explored due to instrumental limitations.
COBREX mainly focusses on giants planets. Because of their masses, giant planets strongly impact the dynamics and fate of lighter bodies (e.g. telluric planets, planetesimals) during and after the proto-planetary phases. They might also impact planet habitability. From an observational point of view, giant planets may also impact the detectability of lighter and closer-in planets with Radial Velocity and astrometry. It is therefore crucial to have the most complete statistical knowledge of giant planet populations, as well as detailed information on individual systems.
The main objective of COBREX is to explore the 5-20 au region, using innovative signal processing developments applied to archival High Contrast Imaging data and/or high-performance, AO-fed medium/high resolution spectrographs. This will, in particular, allow witnessing, for the first time, analogues of our Solar System giants at early ages, and constraining the distribution of giant planets in the 5-20 au. Combining various data (High Contrast Imaging, GAIA, Radial velocity) will furthermore allow characterizing the mass and the orbital properties of the planets, and performing individual analysis as well as measuring the demography of young giant planets from hundredths to hundreds of au.
A second objective is to couple HCI with medium/high resolution spectroscopy, to find and study planet physical and atmospheric properties into exquisite details. This will require developing and using the most up to date spectral libraries.
A third objective is to search for and study debris disks, aged a few Myr in the same archival data. As such, these debris disks represent the remnants of giant planet formation and the sites of possible on-going terrestrial planet formation.
Coupling our results on planets and disks searches, we hope to investigate the link between disks and planets.
Finally, COBREX will explore the possibility of imaging remote magmatic super-Earths in the near future thanks to such improvements.
