Experimental Design for the Gemini Planet Imager

Abstract

The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is a high performance adaptive optics system being designed and built for the Gemini Observatory. GPI is optimized for high contrast imaging, combining precise and accurate wavefront control, diffraction suppression, and a speckle-suppressing science camera with integral field and polarimetry capabilities. The primary science goal for GPI is the direct detection and characterization of young, Jovian-mass exoplanets. For plausible assumptions about the distribution of gas giant properties at large semi-major axes, GPI will be capable of detecting more than 10% of gas giants more massive than 0.5 M_J around stars younger than 100 Myr and nearer than 75 parsecs. For systems younger than 1 Gyr, gas giants more massive than 8 M_J and with semi-major axes greater than 15 AU are detected with completeness greater than 50%. A survey targeting young stars in the solar neighborhood will help determine the formation mechanism of gas giant planets by studying them at ages where planet brightness depends upon formation mechanism. Such a survey will also be sensitive to planets at semi-major axes comparable to the gas giants in our own solar system. In the simple, and idealized, situation in which planets formed by either the "hot-start" model of Burrows et al. (2003) or the core accretion model of Marley et al. (2007), a few tens of detected planets are sufficient to distinguish how planets form.

15 pages, 9 figures, revised after referee's comments and resubmitted to PASP

References in corpus (18)

• Detection of Thermal Emission from an Extrasolar Planet
• On the Luminosity of Young Jupiters
• Debris Disk Evolution Around A Stars
• The Gemini Deep Planet Survey -- GDPS
• Structure and evolution of pre-main sequence circumstellar disks
• The Two Modes of Gas Giant Planet Formation
• Synthetic Spectra and Colors of Young Giant Planet Atmospheres: Effects of Initial Conditions and Atmospheric Metallicity
• Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of a Planetary Mass Candidate Companion to a Young Solar Analog
• A Spectrum of an Extrasolar Planet
• Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems (FEPS): Properties of Debris Dust around Solar-type Stars
• A novel L-band imaging search for giant planets in the Tucana and Beta Pictoris moving groups
• Double-blind test program for astrometric planet detection with Gaia
• Core Formation in Giant Gaseous Protoplanets
• Retired A Stars and Their Companions II: Jovian planets orbiting kappa Coronae Borealis and HD167042
• First detection of polarized scattered light from an exoplanetary atmosphere
• A Survey for Massive Giant Planets in Debris Disks with Evacuated Inner Cavities
• An Ultracool Star's Candidate Planet
• The Lyot Project Direct Imaging Survey of Substellar Companions: Statistical Analysis and Information from Nondetections

Cited by in corpus (31)

• The Gemini Planet Imager: First Light
• The Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey: Giant Planet and Brown Dwarf Demographics From 10-100 AU
• Spectral and Photometric Diagnostics of Giant Planet Formation Scenarios
• Astrometric exoplanet detection with Gaia
• Characterization of exoplanets from their formation I: Models of combined planet formation and evolution
• Water Clouds in Y Dwarfs and Exoplanets
• PALM-3000: Exoplanet Adaptive Optics for the 5-meter Hale Telescope
• Constraining the initial entropy of directly-detected exoplanets
• Global Models of Planet Formation and Evolution
• Reconnaissance of the HR 8799 Exosolar System II: Astrometry and Orbital Motion
• "Retired" Planet Hosts: Not So Massive, Maybe Just Portly After Lunch
• High Contrast Imaging with an Arbitrary Aperture: Active Correction of Aperture Discontinuities
• Probing the Physical Properties of Directly Imaged Gas Giant Exoplanets Through Polarization
• The Anglo-Australian Planet Search. XXIII. Two New Jupiter Analogs
• Gemini Planet Imager Observational Calibrations VIII: Characterization and Role of Satellite Spots
• The First Detection of Photometric Variability in a Y Dwarf: WISE J140518.39+553421.3
• Gemini Planet Imager Observational Calibrations V: Astrometry and Distortion
• How to determine an exomoon's sense of orbital motion
• WFIRST-AFTA Coronagraph Science Yield Modeling with EXOSIMS
• Improving Signal to Noise in the Direct Imaging of Exoplanets and Circumstellar Disks
• Gemini Planet Imager Observational Calibrations IV: Wavelength Calibration and Flexure Correction for the Integral Field Spectrograph
• A Substellar Common Proper Motion Companion to the Pleiad HII 1348
• Automated data processing architecture for the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey
• Exploring the NRO Opportunity for a Hubble-sized Wide-field Near-IR Space Telescope -- NEW WFIRST
• The COBREX archival survey: improved constraints on the occurrence rate of wide-orbit substellar companions. I. A uniform re-analysis of 400 stars from the GPIES survey
• Mining the GPIES database
• Simultaneous ultra-high contrast imaging and determination of time-dependent, non-common path aberrations in the presence of detector noise
• PULSE: The Palomar Ultraviolet Laser for the Study of Exoplanets
• Automated Alignment and On-Sky Performance of the Gemini Planet Imager Coronagraph
• Gemini Planet Imager Observational Calibration XIII: Wavelength Calibration Improvements, Stability, and Nonlinearity
• Direct Imaging of Exoplanets Without Background Subtraction: Implications for ELTs