Description
Almost everything we know about exoplanets comes from light originating from their far more luminous host stars. As a consequence, signatures from stellar surface inhomogeneities can imprint themselves on exoplanet observations; this is especially prevalent at high spectral resolution where even subtle signatures can be decomposed. For Sun-like stars, such inhomogeneities are primarily driven by heat transport via convection at the surface interplaying with magnetic fields, giving rise to various phenomena from granulation and oscillations to faculae/plage, spots, and flares etc. In this talk, I will show how these phenomena alter the shape and position of the stellar absorption lines that we use to probe exoplanet characteristics. The impact is far-reaching, from exoplanet mass determination to our analysis of star-planet dynamical histories to teasing out the chemical makeup of exoplanet atmospheres. I will also discuss ongoing efforts to use high spectral resolution to unveil stellar variability fingerprints and disentangle underlying exoplanet signatures
