Correlations between the occurrence rate of exoplanets and their host star properties provide important clues about the planet formation processes. We studied the dependence of the observed properties of exoplanets (radius, mass, and orbital period) as a function of their host star metallicity. We analyzed the planetary radii and orbital periods of over 2800 Kepler candidates from the latest Kepler data release DR25 (Q1-Q17) with revised planetary radii based on Gaia DR2 as a function of host star metallicity (from the Q1-Q17 (DR25) stellar and planet catalog). With a much larger sample and improved radius measurements, we are able to reconfirm previous results in the literature. We show that the average metallicity of the host star increases as the radius of the planet increases. We demonstrate this by first calculating the average host star metallicity for different radius bins and then supplementing these results by calculating the occurrence rate as a function of planetary radius and host star metallicity. We find a similar trend between host star metallicity and planet mass: the average host star metallicity increases with increasing planet mass. This trend, however, reverses for masses > 4.0 M J : host star metallicity drops with increasing planetary mass. We further examined the correlation between the host star metallicity and the orbital period of the planet. We find that for planets with orbital periods less than 10 days, the average metallicity of the host star is higher than that for planets with periods greater than 10 days.

Nanoporous oxide coatings, such as anodic aluminum oxide (AAO), are utilized as drug‐release platforms for up to weeks of delivery (see picture for doxorubicin, Dox). A burst‐release phase is followed by sustained release, the kinetics of which is described by an activated surface‐density‐dependent desorption model.

State-of-the-art Doppler experiments require wavelength calibration with precision at the cm s −1 level. A low-finesse Fabry-Pérot interferometer (FPI) can provide a wavelength comb with a very large bandwidth as required for astronomical experiments, but unavoidable spectral drifts are difficult to control. Instead of actively controlling the FPI cavity, we propose to passively stabilize the interferometer and track the time-dependent cavity length drift externally using the 87 Rb D 2 atomic line. A dual-finesse cavity allows drift tracking during observation. In the low-finesse spectral range, the cavity provides a comb transmission spectrum tailored to the astronomical spectrograph. The drift of the cavity length is monitored in the high-finesse range relative to an external standard: a single narrow transmission peak is locked to an external cavity diode laser and compared to an atomic frequency from a Doppler-free transition. Following standard locking schemes, tracking at sub-mm s −1 precision can be achieved. This is several orders of magnitude better than currently planned high-precision Doppler experiments, and it allows freedom for relaxed designs including the use of a single-finesse interferometer under certain conditions. All components for the proposed setup are readily available, rendering this approach particularly interesting for upcoming Doppler experiments. We also show that the large number of interference modes used in an astronomical FPI allows us to unambiguously identify the interference mode of each FPI transmission peak defining its absolute wavelength solution. The accuracy reached in each resonance with the laser concept is then defined by the cavity length that is determined from the one locked peak and by the group velocity dispersion. The latter can vary by several 100 m s −1 over the relevant frequency range and severely limits the accuracy of individual peak locations, although their interference modes are known. A potential way to determine the absolute peak positions is to externally measure the frequency of each individual peak with a laser frequency comb (LFC). Thus, the concept of laser-locked FPIs may be useful for applying the absolute accuracy of an LFC to astronomical spectrographs without the need for an LFC at the observatory.

Directly imaged planets (DIPs) are self-luminous companions of pre-main-sequence and young main-sequence stars. They reside in wider orbits (∼tens to thousands of astronomical units) and generally are more massive compared to the close-in (≲10 au) planets. Determining the host star properties of these outstretched planetary systems is important to understand and discern various planet formation and evolution scenarios. We present the stellar parameters and metallicity ([Fe/H]) for a subsample of 18 stars known to host planets discovered by the direct imaging technique. We retrieved the high-resolution spectra for these stars from public archives and used the synthetic spectral fitting technique and Bayesian analysis to determine the stellar properties in a uniform and consistent way. For eight sources, the metallicities are reported for the first time, while the results are consistent with the previous estimates for the other sources. Our analysis shows that metallicities of stars hosting DIPs are close to solar with a mean [Fe/H] = −0.04 ± 0.27 dex. The large scatter in metallicity suggests that a metal-rich environment may not be necessary to form massive planets at large orbital distances. We also find that the planet mass–host star metallicity relation for the directly imaged massive planets in wide orbits is very similar to that found for the well-studied population of short-period (≲1 yr) super-Jupiters and brown dwarfs around main-sequence stars.