A PSF-based Approach to TESS High quality data Of Stellar clusters
  (PATHOS) -- III. Exploring the properties of young associations through their
  variables, dippers, and candidate exoplanets
  Young associations in star forming regions are stellar systems that allow us
to understand the mechanisms that characterise the stars in their early life
and what happens around them. In particular, the analysis of the disks and of
the exoplanets around young stars allows us to know the key processes that
prevail in their evolution and understand the properties of the exoplanets
orbiting older stars. The TESS mission is giving us the opportunity to extract
and analyse the light curves of association members with high accuracy, but the
crowding that affects these regions makes difficult the light curve extraction.
In the PATHOS project, cutting-edge tools are used to extract high-precision
light curves and identify variable stars and transiting exoplanets in open
clusters and associations. In this work, I analysed the light curves of stars
in five young ($\lesssim 10$ Myr) associations, searching for variables and
candidate exoplanets. By using the rotational periods of the association
members, I constrained the ages of the five stellar systems ($\sim 2$-$10$
Myr). I searched for dippers and I investigated the properties of the dust that
forms the circumstellar disks. Finally, I searched for transiting signals,
finding 6 strong candidate exoplanets. No candidates with radius $R_{\rm
P}\lesssim 0.9 R_J$ have been detected, in agreement with the expectations. The
frequency of giant planets resulted to be $\sim$2-3 %, higher than that
expected for field stars ($\lesssim 1$ %); the low statistic makes this
conclusion not strong, and new investigations on young objects are mandatory to
confirm this result.
