Yayaati Chachan

About me

To describe my love for astronomy,
I will resort to a few words by Vera Rubin:
"I became an astronomer because I could not imagine living on Earth and not trying to understand how the Universe works."

I am a third year graduate student in planetary science at Caltech. I have had the privilege of pursuing my long held childhood interest in astronomy and planetary science for the last three years. I grew up in Delhi and finished high school in Singapore on a SIA Youth Scholarship. I then moved to the U.K. to do my undergraduate study at the University of Cambridge, where I finished my bachelors in physics and masters in astronomy.

Research Interests

I have a broad interest in planets and protoplanetary discs, which is reflected by the breadth of my projects. More specifically, I am interested in:

Planetary atmospheric composition and its provenance
Atmosphere-interior interaction and its observable consequences
Planet formation and accretion of envelopes onto cores
Dust evolution in protoplanetary disks and consequences for planet formation

I use observational, analytical, and numerical methods in my attempts to study these areas. For more details, please take a look at the projects I am involved in.

Current and Past Projects

C.V.

Education

PhD, California Institute of Technology, 2017-
Advisors: Heather Knutson and Dave Stevenson
M. Sci, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, 2016-17
Advisors: Cathie Clarke, Amaury Triaud, Richard Booth
B. A., Natural Sciences (Physics), University of Cambridge, 2013-16

Recipient of: Institute of Astronomy Prize, Dirac Prize,
Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Scholarship,
SIA Youth Scholarship

Selected Publications

1. Chachan, Y. & Stevenson, D. J. 2018, On the role of dissolved gases in the atmosphere retention of Low-Mass Low-Density planets, ApJ, 854, 21, arXiv:1802.04296
2. Zhang, M., Chachan, Y., Kempton, E. M.-R., & Knutson, H. A. 2019, Forward modelling and retrievals with PLATON, a fast open source tool, PASP, 131, 034501, arXiv:1811.11761
3. Chachan, Y. & Stevenson, D. J. 2019, A linear approximation for the effect of cylindrical differential rotation on gravitational moments: Application to the non-unique interpretation of Saturn's gravity, Icarus, 323, 87, arXiv:1902.10728
4. Chachan, Y., Booth, R. A., Triaud, A. H. M. J., & Clarke, C. 2018, Dust accretion in binary systems: Implications for planets and transition discs, MNRAS, 489, 3896, arXiv:1908.11377, astrobites
5. Chachan, Y., Knutson, H., Gao, P., Kataria, T., et al. 2019, A Hubble PanCET Study of HAT-P-11b: A cloudy Neptune with a low atmospheric metallicity, AJ, 158, 244, arXiv:1910.07523
6. Zhang, M., Chachan, Y., Kempton, E. M.-R., Knutson, H. A., & Chang, W. 2020, PLATON II: New capabilities and a comprehensive retrieval on HD 189733b transit and eclipse data (ApJ, under review), arXiv:2004.09513
7. Chachan, Y., Jontof-Hutter, D. J., Knutson, H., et al. 2020, A featureless infrared transmission spectrum for the super-puff planet Kepler-79d (AJ, submitted)

ADS Full C.V.