Speaker
Description
Direct observations of substellar companions are ideally suited to study young giant planets and brown dwarfs during or shortly after their formation. As such, this unique class of objects provides valuable insights into planet formation processes and the imprints they leave on the chemical composition and atmospheric properties of young companions. However, the traditional population of directly-imaged giant planets and brown dwarfs resides at wide (>20 au) separations from the host star, where classical high-contrast imagers are able to detect them. Recently, long-baseline interferometry has opened up the direct detection of substellar companions on Solar System like scales, down to a few au from the star. This enables studying young giant planets where they are expected to form most frequently, and removes possible biases introduced by planet migration and scattering processes. Novel data reduction approaches for JWST making use of machine learning techniques now enable the study of the same objects at au separations with JWST interferometry, providing new constraints on CO and CO2 abundance in the mid-infrared (3-5 micron). By combining JWST and GRAVITY, the atmospheres of gas giants near the snowline can now be studied at an unparalleled precision, yielding not only constraints on the carbon chemistry, but also the formation history of these objects if combined with dynamical masses from Gaia DR4 in the near future.
| Category | Synergies between JWST and other observing facilities |
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