Yapeng Zhang
Astronomer
I am a PhD student at Leiden Observatory, working on characterisations of exoplanet atmospheres under the supervision of Prof. Ignas Snellen. I obtained my Master's degree in Astronomy and Data Science at Leiden University. Prior to that, I studied astronomy at Nanjing University in China. My research interests include various aspects of extra-solar planets and formation of planetary systems, with a particular focus on exoplanet atmospheres. Here is my Curriculum Vitae.
ADS library of Yapeng Zhang's publications.
Sep 2019 - Present
Characterization of exoplanet atmospheres with high-resolution spectroscopy
With the rapidly growing number of extra-solar planets detected, we have entered an era of characterizing their physical properties. As exoplanets show immense diversity in their masses, sizes, compositions and orbital configurations, they pose great challenges to planet-formation theories. The characterization of exoplanet atmospheres is essential for investigating these questions because atmospheres provide fossil records of the formation condition and evolution history of planets. Moreover, the detection of biosignatures such as water, oxygen and ozone in atmospheres can indicate the habitability of exoplanets. Spectroscopy of exoplanets can reveal physical, chemical and dynamical properties of their atmospheres, however these observations tend to be overwhelmed by the light coming from the host stars. One way of overcoming this is to use high resolution spectroscopy, which resolves the atomic or molecular features into tens or hundreds of individual lines. The Doppler shift of the spectral lines due to the orbital motion of planets can help disentangle the planetary signals from the stationary stellar and telluric lines. This method is sensitive to the depth, shape and position of the lines, therefore can constrain various aspects of atmospheres including chemical composition, thermal structure, clouds and hazes, spin, high-altitude winds and atmospheric escape. This has been successfully implemented on giant planets, and the aim of future work is to push it to the limit that enables characterization of smaller Earth-like planets.
Sep 2017 - July 2019
Dust evolution in protoplanetray disks
Supervised by Prof. Michiel Hogerheijde and Dr. Leon Trapman, we studied the effect of global dust evolution and gap formation on multi-wavelength continuum observations of TW Hydrae. This project involves processing of radio data at multiple wavelengths and modeling of the physical disk, by which we investigated the dust distribution and evolution in the disk.
Probing exoplanet atmospheres with Integral-Field Spectroscopy
Supervised by Prof. Ignas Snellen and Dr. Paul Wilson, the project utilised Integral-Field Spectroscopic data for atmospheric characterisation of directly imaged giant exoplanets with large orbital separation, e.g. beta Pictoris b and HR 8799c.
Sep 2013 - July 2017
Simulations on planet formation in highly inclined binary systems
Under the supervision of Prof. Jiwei Xie, this project numerically studied the late stage of terrestrial planet formation, i.e., from embryos to full planets, in binary systems of various orbital configurations. An orbital alignment effect and enhancement of planet formation in cases of intermediate binary separations were suggested.
yzhang@strw.leidenuniv.nl
Leiden Observatory, Niels Bohrweg 2, 2333CA Leiden, The Netherlands
Oort 535