The occurrence of exoplanets across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram

The possibility of planets orbiting other stars has been a topic of fascination for centuries. We are the first generation that has brought these planets - now known as exoplanets - from the realm of science-fiction into that of science. An important milestone was the discovery of several planets orbiting a pulsar (Wolszczan & Frail, 1992), followed by the first planet orbiting a star more similar to our Sun (Mayor & Queloz, 1995), an achievement recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. The 25 years since have been filled with an abundance of exciting discoveries and today we know over 4000 exoplanets. These planets exhibit an incredible diversity of properties. Why do so many planets have tiny orbits - often much smaller than that of Mercury? What causes planets to become rocky, gaseous, or something in between? Why do some planets have orbits that are strongly eccentric, or misaligned with the rotation of their host stars? What happens to planets when stars evolve away from the main sequence? Which planets are the most favourable and interesting targets for studies of their atmospheres? How unique is our solar system - are we alone?

This project will make use of novel data from the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). TESS is the first space mission to provide nearly all-sky photometry, covering an area 400 times larger than that of the previous NASA planet finding-mission, called Kepler (Borucki et al. 2010). The TESS primary mission will be completed by the summer of 2020. During this PhD project we will use these state-of-the-art observations to detect new transiting exoplanets and quantify their occurrence. In particular, we will investigate the properties of exoplanetary systems around stars of all types and evolutionary properties. Comparing exoplanets around stars with different masses and ages will provide key insight into how planetary systems form, and how they evolve over time. In this way, we will gain fundamental new insights into planet formation theories.