Carving the Edges of the Small Planet Population

This conference talk explores the boundaries of small exoplanet populations, presented by Eve Lee from UCSD as part of the "Planets on the Edge" KITP conference held at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara in May 2025. Delve into the fascinating discoveries from the Kepler and TESS missions, which have revealed thousands of short-period exoplanets, including many Earth-sized rocky planets with no Solar System equivalents. Learn about the challenges in studying the inner regions of protoplanetary disks where these planets form, and explore key questions about their nature, formation mechanisms, atmospheric properties, and why similar planets don't exist around our Sun. The presentation contributes to a broader conference goal of synthesizing current knowledge about planets and inner disks, highlighting state-of-the-art formation models, fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration, and charting future directions for observations, theory, and computational modeling in exoplanet science.