Galactic scale hot and cool exoplanet demography with Roman and Euclid

This proposal focuses on exoplanets - planets that orbit stars other than the Sun. We currently know of around 6000 such planets. The arrangements of exoplanets around their host stars and the frequency of exoplanetary systems throughout our Galaxy remain poorly understood. This is mostly because the data we have obtained so far are dominated by planetary systems occupying only the portion of our Galaxy near the solar neighbourhood. The Vision of this proposal is to seek to dramatically expand our knowledge of exoplanet systems to encompass host stars with a much wider range of age and composition. This vision requires the capability to detect exoplanets in large numbers across Galactic distances in order to access different stellar hosts. Soon after launch in October 2026, the NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will initiate a 5-year Galactic-scale planet census of up to 200,000 exoplanets that will include planets orbiting close to their host (hot exoplanets), planets orbiting far from their host (cool exoplanets), and even planets that do not appear to orbit any star (free floating planets). This dataset will be obtained using two very different exoplanet detection methods. This proposal seeks to develop tools that can effectively combine the results of both methods.
In March 2025, the ESA Euclid mission is due to image the area later to be surveyed by Roman, in a unique scientific partnership that will ultimately provide significant improvements in the quality of results Roman will deliver. Kerins, the Project Lead of this Small Award proposal, has leading roles within both the Euclid and Roman exoplanet surveys and his work has been pivotal in getting Euclid to undertake coordinated observations with Roman.
Through this Small Award, Kerins requests support for his work and for a new Research and Innovation Associate to develop, test and apply tools that will form the heart of the exoplanet census studies with Euclid and Roman data. Funding from April 2026...