For centuries, an orderly view of planetary system architectures dominated the discourse on planetary systems. However, there is growing evidence that many planetary systems underwent a period of upheaval, during which giant planets "migrated" from where they formed. This thesis addresses a question key to understanding how planetary systems evolve: is planetary migration typically a smooth, disk-driven process or a violent process involving strong multi-body gravitational interactions? First, we analyze evidence from the dynamical structure of debris disks dynamically sculpted during planets' migration. Based on the orbital properties our own solar system's Kuiper belt, we deduce that Neptune likely underwent both planet-planet scattering and smooth migration caused by interactions with leftover planetesimals. In another planetary system, Beta Pictoris, we find that the giant planet discovered there must be responsible for the observed warp of the system's debris belt, reconciling observations that suggested otherwise. Second, we develop two new approaches for characterizing planetary orbits: one for distinguishing the signal of a planet's orbit from aliases, spurious signals caused by gaps in the time sampling of the data, and another to measure the eccentricity of a planet's orbit from transit photometry, "the photoeccentric effect." We use the photoeccentric effect to determine whether any of the giant planets discovered by the Kepler Mission are currently undergoing planetary migration on highly elliptical orbits. We find a lack of such "super-eccentric" Jupiters, allowing us to place an upper limit on the fraction of hot Jupiters created by the stellar binary Kozai mechanism. Finally, we find new correlations between the orbital properties of planets and the metallicity of their host stars. Planets orbiting metal-rich stars show signatures of strong planet-planet gravitational interactions, while those orbiting metal-poor stars do not. Taken together, the results of thesis suggest that suggest that both disk migration and planet-planet interactions likely play a role in setting the architectures of planetary systems. / Astronomy

As part of the McDonald Observatory M dwarf planet search program, we present the results and detection limits for our high-precision radial velocity survey of 99 M dwarf stars. We also detail our efforts to improve the precision of our RV measurements as well as our frequency analysis methods. For any RV program, it is essential to obtain as high a precision as possible; increasing sensitivity can realistically reveal terrestrial-mass planets with our data. M dwarfs provide a unique opportunity to study these lower-mass planets (the so-called "super-Earths") from ground-based facilities; such planets are mostly undetectable around FGK stars, whose larger masses result in much smaller RV amplitudes. However, the low intrinsic luminosities of the M spectral type make it difficult to obtain high S/N measurements for a statistically significant sample, making our analysis improvements especially critical. Finally, we conduct a statistical analysis of the 21 known M dwarf planets. In particular, we use the photometric metallicity calibration for M dwarfs described in Johnson and Apps (2009) to further explore the frequency of planetary systems as a function of stellar metallicity. Our analysis confirms the correlation between stellar mass and the presence of giant planets, but also reveals a significant metallicity dependence on the presence of high-mass planets for M dwarfs. We show that the metallicities of our target sample are evenly distributed around solar [M/H], eliminating the possibility that the results of our survey will be biased due to metallicity effects. The frequency and characteristics of planets around M stars provides important insight into planet formation theories, especially for giant planets, which appear to form less easily around low-mass primaries. While previous results suggesting a dearth of short-period Jovian planets around M stars still holds, there is now a long enough observational time baseline to begin to characterize the frequency of planets with lower masses and larger orbital separations around these stars as opposed to other main sequence stars. / text

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2005. / "May, 2005." Includes bibliographical references. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (LL.M.). / Written for the Institute of Air and Space Law. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/12/04). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005. / Dr. Waymond R. Scott, Committee Member ; Dr. Aaron Lanterman, Committee Member ; Dr. Paul G. Steffes, Committee Chair ; Dr. Andrew F. Peterson, Committee Member ; Dr. Judith A. Curry, Committee Member. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Originally presented as the author's Thesis (Ph. D.)--Hacettepe Üniversitesi, Ankara, Turkey, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-135) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 115-124).