The student of the Master in Astrophysics, Particle Physics and Cosmology at the Universitat de Barcelona, Marc del Alcázar i Julià, has received the Second Price for the Best Final Bachelor’s Thesis (TFG) defended during the academic year 2021-2022. The Societat Catalana de Física (SCF) is an affiliate of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC), and the award is given yearly in the context of the Premis Sant Jordi of the IEC.
The award is offered for a final degree project (TFG) of a degree that has a high physics content, carried out by students from universities in Catalan-speaking countries. The acceptance of the prize implies the commitment, on the part of the author, to adapt the work to the article format for publication in the Revista de Física. The amount of the prize is one thousand two hundred euros (€1,200) and up to two winners may be awarded with a financial endowment of six hundred euros (€600) each.
The thesis, titled Vetting and characterization of 24 new K2 planetary candidates, supervised by Professor Jorge Núñez of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the Universitat de Barcelona (ICCUB) together with the ICCUB members Daniel del Ser and Octavi Fors, presents 24 new exoplanet candidates with good chances of being detected by the TESS (Transit Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission.
The detection of exoplanets via the transit method is a very degenerate problem, because the observed diminishing of brightness can be caused by many astrophysical and instrumental processes apart from the presence of exoplanets. In order to improve the definition of the nature of the object causing the transit, it is necessary to apply a set of inquisitive vetting tools. That is the purpose of the presented TFG, which uses as input set a subsample of the collection of new K2 (Kepler extended mission) planetary candidates presented in del Alćazar et al. 2021 as the result of the application of TFAW (del Ser et al. 2018) to a sample of K2 lightcurves. The outcome of the work includes the characterization of 24 new K2 planetary candidates, eight of them part of multiplanetary systems.
At present, Marc del Alcázar is finishing the Master in Astrophysics, Particle Physics and Cosmology at the Universitat de Barcelona. In his Master Thesis, he is working with the Professor of the ICCUB Cesca Figueras on the optimization of galactic parameters (the Star Formation History and the Initial Mass Function) within the framework of the Besançon Galaxy Model Fast Approximate Simulations (BGMFASt, Mor et al. 2018).
More information:
- Vetting and characterization of 24 new K2
References:
- M. del Alcázar, D. del Ser, and O. Fors, in CS20.5 (2021), Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun, p. 316.
- D. del Ser, O. Fors, and J. Núñez, A&A 619, A86 (2018).
- Mor, R., Robin, A. C., Figueras, F., and Antoja, T., A&A 620, 2018.
