Unravelling the Atmospheres of Far Away Worlds

The discovery of exoplanets and the advances in their atmospheric characterization has opened up a new realm not just to answer the fundamental question, Are we alone in this Universe? but also in understanding the diversity of planetary atmospheres in general. In this talk I will describe how we model the atmospheres of exoplanets from first principles motivated by their observations. I will then talk about a suite of forward model atmospheric libraries that I have developed over the years to plan and interpret the observations of hot Jupiter and warm Neptune exoplanets, as well as gain in-depth understanding of the physical and thermochemical processes that govern these atmospheres.  I will show how these libraries have already been used to make various exciting discoveries along-with important testable predictions for JWST. I will talk about the retrieval techniques and various other tools that I have been developing in preparation for the JWST mission. I will discuss about my future plans to expand and improve these libraries, develop modeling techniques for mini-Neptune and super-Earth planets in addition to solar system planets, using 3D GCM’s and creating a database of opacities for a wide range of species including various bio-signature gases. Finally, I will talk about my future plan to develop reduction pipelines for exoplanet observations using some of the facilities in India and instruments developed at TIFR.