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Circumbinary planets (CBP) are planets orbiting both components of a binary star. They may be detected by a variety of techniques, making use of precise photometry or spectroscopy. Currently only about 15 such systems are known, with the vast majority of them discovered in the last 5 years, either indirectly by variations in the timing of binary eclipses or, beginning in 2011, directly through the detection of transits in data from the Kepler satellite. Circumbinary planets are an interesting test-bed for planet formation models, as they need to account for the additional perturbation and stability issues arising from the binaries' orbit. The planets around some evolved binaries may even have formed as a result of that evolution rather than with the original host system. The current sample of such planets is however still very small and the true parameter space for their existence is still poorly known. Future space missions, especially PLATO, will provide an excellent opportunity to greatly increase the sample and knowledge of these systems. The goal of this session is therefore to bring together contributions that treat the current observational and theoretical status, and contributions about detection methodologies and experiments. The expectation is that insights from the current status of CBP science will lead to an improvement in any future detection and characterization effort.

Programme

• Characteristics, morphology and statistics of the known CBP population
• CBP formation and evolution
• CBP detection methods and algorithms (timing, transits, RV, imaging, etc.)
• Current and future detection experiments, ground and space based

Invited speakers

• William Welsh (San Diego State Univ., USA)
• Arnaud Pierens (Univ. Bordeaux, France)
• Thomas Marsh (Warwick Univ., GB)

Scientific organisers
Hans J. Deeg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain
Frederic Hessman, Universität Göttingen, Germany
Tsevi Mazeh, Tel Aviv University

Contact
hdeeg @ iac.es