Search and characterization of young planets with GAPS2

The “GAPS” (Global Architecture of Planetary Systems) project gathers a large part of the Italian community working on exoplanets. One of our aims is the search for young exoplanets with HARPS-N and GIARPS at TNG, since they are the key targets to study the ongoing planet formation and to investigate the role played by the migration mechanisms, the formation sites and the orbit evolution on their observed diversity. Transit space missions are significantly contributing in our view of young planetary systems at close separations, providing robust candidates to be followed-up with the radial velocity (RV) technique.  

The Young Objects sub-program of GAPS2 searches for young planets by surveying members in young (e.g., Taurus, Cepheus) and intermediate age (e.g. Coma Ber, Hyades) associations, and perform an RV follow-up of young transiting candidates, mainly provided by the NASA-TESS satellite. For a proper treatment of the high level of the stellar activity, typical for these objects, we work to improve the RV extraction and exploit the Gaussian process regression modelling, supported by an intensive RV monitoring.

I will review the first results of our survey, including the confirmation and the retraction of known planet candidates, the stellar parameters such as stellar age and membership to groups, chemical composition, magnetic activity and high-energy emission and their link to planet detectability and evaporation of the atmospheres.