Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of Planetary Systems through Population-Level, Large-Scale Surveys

Abstract

Over the past three decades, exoplanet research has delivered an extensive census of planets spanning a wide range of masses, sizes, and orbital configurations. Despite this progress, the physical interpretation of these populations remains severely limited, as precise constraints on planetary masses, interior structures, and atmospheres are available only for a small, highly selected subset of targets. As a result, most known exoplanets remain physically ambiguous, preventing the construction of robust population-level trends and limiting our understanding of planet formation, evolution, and habitability. In the coming decades, missions such as PLATO, Earth 2.0, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will dramatically expand the number of exoplanets detected. However, without a corresponding capability to characterise planetary masses and atmospheres at scale, these discoveries will remain largely detection-driven. Current and planned facilities, including JWST and ELT-class instruments, excel at detailed studies of individual systems but are intrinsically unsuited for large, homogeneous surveys. This white paper identifies population-level physical characterisation as a fundamental science challenge for the 2040s and motivates the need for a new observational paradigm. We outline how photonics-enabled, modular telescope architectures can deliver the survey speed, stability, and scalability required to jointly probe planetary interiors and atmospheres across statistically meaningful samples, thereby enabling a comprehensive and physically grounded understanding of planetary systems.