The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is a high performance adaptive optics system being designed and built for the Gemini Observatory. GPI is optimized for high contrast imaging, combining precise and accurate wavefront control, diffraction suppression, and a speckle-suppressing science camera with integral field and polarimetry capabilities. The primary science goal for GPI is the direct detection and characterization of young, Jovian-mass exoplanets. For plausible assumptions about the distribution of gas giant properties at large semi-major axes, GPI will be capable of detecting more than 10% of gas giants more massive than 0.5 M_J around stars younger than 100 Myr and nearer than 75 parsecs. For systems younger than 1 Gyr, gas giants more massive than 8 M_J and with semi-major axes greater than 15 AU are detected with completeness greater than 50%. A survey targeting young stars in the solar neighborhood will help determine the formation mechanism of gas giant planets by studying them at ages where planet brightness depends upon formation mechanism. Such a survey will also be sensitive to planets at semi-major axes comparable to the gas giants in our own solar system. In the simple, and idealized, situation in which planets formed by either the hot-start model of Burrows et al. (2003) or the core accretion model of Marley et al. (2007), a few tens of detected planets are sufficient to distinguish how planets form.
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