Research

Exoplanets, binary stars, and multiple-star systems in Galactic context.

My research uses large astronomical surveys and spectroscopic datasets to connect planetary and stellar systems to the Galactic populations they come from. I also work on compact objects in binary systems.

Research Themes

Systems and populations across the Milky Way.

Planet occurrence in the Galaxy

How metallicity, α-abundance, kinematics, and Galactic component membership change planetary rates and architectures.

Planetary System Architectures

Metrics for comparing full planetary systems, including the Weighted Energy Distance approach.

Binary and multiple stars

Demographics across Galactic populations, compact hierarchical triples, and tidal circularization physics.

Dormant compact objects

Gaia black-hole binaries and related systems as probes of stellar evolution and binary formation channels.

Selected Results

Full publication list on ADS

Mass-radius relation for inner Neptunes in systems with and without outer giant planets.

Inner Neptunes in systems with outer giants

Inner Neptunes with detected outer giants show systematically larger radii at fixed mass than comparable systems without detected outer giants.

Paper

$Close binary fraction as a function of metallicity for field stars and globular clusters.$

Binary fractions across metallicity and environment

Close binary fractions vary with metallicity and differ between field dwarfs, giants, and globular clusters.

Paper

Circularization cutoff behavior as a function of stellar effective temperature.

Tidal circularization and stellar temperature

The circularization cutoff shows a strong dependence on effective temperature, consistent with pre-main-sequence circularization.

Paper

Inclination distribution for astrometric binaries and compact hierarchical triple candidates.

Compact hierarchical triples

Compact hierarchical triple candidates show evidence for mutual orbit alignment relative to the wider astrometric binary population.

Paper

Energy and angular momentum diagram showing Galactic populations and halo binary samples.

Halo binaries in phase space

Galactic energy and angular momentum help separate disc, in-situ halo, and accreted stellar populations for close-binary studies.

Paper

Planet eccentricity-period diagram for small and giant planets.

Planet eccentricity-period structure

Giant planets show a clear eccentricity envelope, while low-mass planets have a flatter eccentricity distribution.

Paper

HARPS-derived map of close-in small planet occurrence across Galactic populations.

HARPS planet occurrence in Galactic context

Close-in small-planet occurrence measured across Galactic populations using HARPS data.

Paper

Weighted Energy Distance comparison of planetary system architectures.

Comparing planetary system architectures

The Weighted Energy Distance provides a way to compare full planetary system architectures rather than isolated planet properties.

Paper

Posterior distributions of planet occurrence in the Galactic thin and thick discs.

Kepler planets in the thin and thick discs

Posterior distributions compare average planet numbers and planet-host fractions between Galactic thin- and thick-disc populations.

Paper