Searching for Exomoons signatures on the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect

The diversity and the quantity of moons in the Solar System suggest a variety of natural satellites exist around extrasolar planets. Of particular interest from an astrobiological perspective, the number of a recently predicted class of Mars-mass moons in the stellar habitable zones with day-night cycles may outnumber planets in these circumstellar regions. These large moons could be several times as massive as Ganymede, the most massive moon in the Solar System, up to 0.5 Earth masses, and are potentially detectable with current or near-future technology around the largest planets outside the Solar System. In fact, current instruments and theoretical methods are allowing the detection of sub-Earth sized extrasolar planets, down to Mercury-sized ones. Thus, the first detection of a massive extrasolar moon appears feasible and it is probably only a matter of time. The detection of these moons would not only provide insights into planet formation and evolution but will revolutionize our understanding of life in the Universe and exoplanet science as well. In this thesis, I summarize the formation channels of massive moons, the conditions of habitability of exomoons and the techniques that have been proposed in the past to search for them. Most notably, this thesis is focused on detecting exomoons from shape deformation or deviations on the Rossiter-McLaughlin signal of an exoplanet.