Friday, March 13, 2026 at 12:15 pm

JILA Foothills Room

Dino Chih-Chun Hsu , Northwestern University

"Formation and Evolution of Giant Planets and Cool Worlds through High-resolution Spectroscopy"

Abstract:

There are over 6,000 exoplanet discoveries today. Among this large exoplanet population, there exist only about 20 directly imaged giant exoplanets. However, these young giant planets at separations of 5 to hundreds of au offer a unique laboratory for planet formation and evolution. These planets are most amenable to both orbital dynamics and atmospheric characterizations. My research encompasses low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and giant exoplanets primarily using high- resolution spectroscopy with Keck/NIRSPEC, SDSS/APOGEE, Gemini/IGRINS, and Keck/KPIC. In this talk, I will first highlight my research on the largest local late-M, L, T dwarf kinematic and radial velocity survey enabled by high-resolution spectroscopy. Then, I will discuss my recent work on the largest spectroscopic survey of giant planet and brown dwarf companions, in which I use spins and abundances to distinguish among different formation channels. I will discuss my ongoing projects to probe the refractory species to assess the formation history of exoplanets, and prospects with next-generation high-resolution spectroscopy such as Keck/HISPEC, in the era of ELT.               

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