Related papers: The Survival Rate of Ejected Terrestrial Planets w…
Gas giant planets may form early-on during the evolution of protostellar discs, while these are relatively massive. We study how Jupiter-mass planet-seeds (termed protoplanets) evolve in massive, but gravitationally stable (Q>1.5), discs…
Gas giant planets in the Solar system host large satellite systems with multiple regular and irregular moons. Regular moons revolve around their host planet in circular, low inclination short period orbits, and are thought to form in-situ…
Hypothetical exomoons around close-in giant planets may migrate inwards and/or outwards in virtue of the interplay of the star, planet and moon tidal interactions. These processes could be responsible for the disruption of lunar systems,…
Planets with several Earth masses and a few day orbital periods have been discovered through radial velocity and transit surveys. Regardless of their formation mechanism, a key evolution issue is the efficiency of their retention near their…
Exoplanets with substantial Hydrogen/Helium atmospheres have been discovered in abundance, many residing extremely close to their parent stars. The extreme irradiation levels these atmospheres experience causes them to undergo hydrodynamic…
At the final stage of terrestrial planet formation, known as the giant impact stage, a few tens of Mars-sized protoplanets collide with one another to form terrestrial planets. Almost all previous studies on the orbital and accretional…
During their formation, emerging protoplanets tidally interact with their natal disks. Proto-gas-giant planets, with Hills radius larger than the disk thickness, open gaps and quench gas flow in the vicinity of their orbits. It is usually…
Planetary systems with sufficiently small orbital spacings can experience planetary mergers and ejections. The branching ratio of mergers vs ejections depends sensitively on the treatment of planetary close encounters. Previous works have…
We study the magnetic and tidal interactions of a gas-giant exoplanet with its host star and with its exomoons, and focus on their retention. We briefly revisit the scaling law for planetary dynamo in terms of its mass, radius and…
We present a series of calculations aimed at examining how an inner system of planetesimals/protoplanets, undergoing terrestrial planet formation, evolves under the influence of a giant planet undergoing inward type II migration through the…
Terrestrial planets form in a series of dynamical steps from the solid component of circumstellar disks. First, km-sized planetesimals form likely via a combination of sticky collisions, turbulent concentration of solids, and gravitational…
Many exoplanets in close-in orbits are observed to have relatively high eccentricities and large stellar obliquities. We explore the possibility that these result from planet-planet scattering by studying the dynamical outcomes from a large…
The composition of giant planets' atmospheres is an important tracer of their formation history. While many theoretical studies investigate the heavy-element accretion within a gaseous protoplanetary disk, the possibility of solid accretion…
This study considers the characteristics of planetary systems with giant planets based on a population-level analysis of the California Legacy Survey planet catalog. We identified three characteristics common to hot Jupiters. First, while…
Context: The Solar System giant planets harbour a wide variety of moons. Moons around exoplanets are plausibly similarly abundant, even though most of them are likely too small to be easily detectable with modern instruments. Moons are…
Although current sensitivity limits are such that true Solar System analogs remain challenging to detect, numerous planetary systems have been discovered that are very different from our own Solar System. The majority of systems harbor a…
The currently feasible method of detection of Earth-mass planets is transit photometry, with detection probability decreasing with a planet's distance from the star. The existence or otherwise of short-period terrestrial planets will tell…
Terrestrial planets are believed to be formed via giant impacts of Mars-sized protoplanets. Planets formed via giant impacts have highly eccentric orbits. A swarm of planetesimals around the planets may lead to eccentricity damping for the…
Moons orbiting rocky exoplanets in compact orbits about other stars experience an accelerated tidal evolution, and can either merge with their parent planet or reach the limit of dynamical instability within a Hubble time. We review the…
Gas giants orbiting interior to the ice line are thought to have been displaced from their formation locations by processes that remain debated. Here we uncover several new metallicity trends, which together may indicate that two competing…