Searching for Circumbinary Planets and Initial Results from the Indian X-ray Polarimeter

Esmer's talk, "Searching for circumbinary planets using eclipse timing variations," will present an eclipse timing variation study of detached eclipsing binaries observed by TESS to search for massive, long-period companions. He will show how precise eclipse modeling and recovery simulations enable sensitivity estimates across a wide parameter space. Finally, he will discuss the resulting occurrence rate constraints for circumbinary planets and substellar companions.

Rikame will present the talk, "Opening the 8-30 keV Polarization Window: Initial Results from the Indian X-ray Polarimeter (POLIX)." POLIX is the principal scientific payload on XPoSat (X-ray Polarimeter Satellite), India’s first dedicated X-ray polarimetry mission, launched on 1 January 2024. The instrument is based on the anisotropic Thomson scattering of polarized X-rays from a low-atomic-mass scatterer (beryllium) and their subsequent detection in X-ray proportional counters. POLIX is sensitive to X-ray polarization in the 8-30 keV energy range, complementing NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), which operates in the 2-8 keV band. In this talk, he will present initial results from POLIX.

Sponsored by the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.