Abstract

Invited Talk - Plenary

Interactions of exoplanets and stars

Katja Poppenhäger
AIP

Every low-mass star in the Milky Way can be expected to host at least one exoplanet on average. Many of those exoplanets are embedded in an extreme environment created by their host stars, both in terms of radiation and space weather. These intense environments stem in part from the close orbital distances that some exoplanets have to their host star, but also from higher magnetic activity states of many host stars compared to our own Sun. Especially the quest for finding biosignatures needs a much better understanding than we currently have of what magnetic activity and high-energy radiation does to small planets around small stars. An intriguing puzzle piece are star-planet interactions, which focus on the influence that exoplanets can exert on their host stars. They are incredibly difficult to identify in observations, because they are easily masked by intrinsic stellar variability and biases in planet detections. However, we have entered an era where large surveys start to uncover the reality of tidal and magnetic star-planet interactions. I will review the field of star-planet interactions from its early beginnings shortly after the first exoplanet detections to the most exciting results from the past 12 months.