Modeling the exoplanet population of the solar vicinity with a cosmological galaxy simulation

Abstract

This work aims to simulate a realistic habitable exoplanetary population through stateof-the-art models. It analyses various factors that influence the habitability of exoplanets, such as the host stellar mass, stellar metallicity, stellar birth position, stellar age, and the semi-major axis of the planet’s orbit. The results obtained are then compared with the known exoplanetary population sourced from the NASA Exoplanetary Archive (NASA 2023). Remarkable results have been obtained in the host star’s metallicities, as a common negative metallicity tendency is observed in NASA’s habitable planets, as well as in the simulation developed in this work. A percentage of habitable exoplanets within the initially presented population of approximately ∼ 2% has been determined, while the current percentage of habitable exoplanets among the discovered population to date is approximately ∼ 1.5%.