Related papers: Ice Lines, Planetesimal Composition and Solid Surf…
Astronomical observations reveal that protoplanetary disks around young stars commonly have ring- and gap-like structures in their dust distributions. These features are associated with pressure bumps trapping dust particles at specific…
Understanding the phases of water ice that were present in the solar nebula has implications for understanding cometary and planetary compositions as well as internal evolution of these bodies. Here we show that amorphous ice formed more…
Planets with sizes between those of Earth and Neptune divide into two populations: purely rocky bodies whose atmospheres contribute negligibly to their sizes, and larger gas-enveloped planets possessing voluminous and optically thick…
In the core accretion model of giant planet formation, a solid protoplanetary core begins to accrete gas directly from the nebula when its mass reaches about 5 earth masses. The protoplanet has at most a few million years to reach runaway…
Recent theoretical works suggest that the pebble accretion process is important for planet formation in protoplanetary disks, because it accelerates the growth of planetary cores. While several observations reveal axisymmetric sharp gaps in…
As part of our ongoing initiative on accurately calculating the accretion rate of planetesimals in the core-accretion model, we demonstrated in a recent article that when the calculations include the gravitational force of the Sun (the…
It has been proposed that the observed systems of hot super-Earths formed in situ from high-mass disks. By fitting a disk profile to the entire population of Kepler planet candidates, Chiang & Laughlin (2013) constructed a "minimum-mass…
Jupiter's enhancement in nitrogen relative to hydrogen when compared to the Sun has been interpreted as evidence that its early formation occurred beyond the N$_{2}$ snowline ($\sim$ 20-40 AU). However, the rapid growth necessary to form…
Solid particles in protoplanetary disks that are sufficiently super-solar in metallicity overcome turbulence generated by vertical shear to gravitationally condense into planetesimals. Super-solar metallicities result if solid particles…
I report a novel theory that nonuniform viscous frictional force in the solar nebula accounts for the largest mass of Jupiter and Saturn and their largest amount of H and He among the planets, two outstanding facts that are unsolved puzzles…
The favored theoretical explanation for giant planet formation -- in both our solar system and others -- is the core accretion model (although it still has some serious difficulties). In this scenario, planetesimals accumulate to build up…
Context. The classical "planetesimal" accretion scenario for the formation of planets has recently evolved with the idea that "pebbles", centimeter- to meter-sized icy grains migrating in protoplanetary disks, can control planetesimal…
We review results about protoplanetary disk models, protoplanet migration and formation of giant planets with migrating cores. We first model the protoplanetary nebula as an \alpha-accretion disk and present steady state calculations for…
We propose a scenario for the formation of the Main Belt in which asteroids incorporated icy particles formed in the outer Solar Nebula. We calculate the composition of icy planetesimals formed beyond a heliocentric distance of 5 AU in the…
We fit an isothermal oscillatory density model of Uranus' protoplanetary disk to the present-day major satellites and we determine the radial scale length of the disk, the equation of state and the central density of the primordial gas, and…
We present the first results from simulations of processes leading to planet formation in protoplanetary disks with different metallicities. For a given metallicity, we construct a two-dimensional grid of disk models with different initial…
We model the evolution of the snow line in a protoplanetary disc. If the magneto-rotational instability (MRI) drives turbulence throughout the disc, there is a unique snow line outside of which the disc is icy. The snow line moves closer to…
The increasing number of newly detected exoplanets at short orbital periods raises questions about their formation and migration histories. A particular puzzle that requires explanation arises from one of the key results of the Kepler…
The exoplanet diversity has been linked to the disc environment in which they form, where the host star metallicity and the formation pathways play a crucial role. In the context of the core accretion paradigm, the initial stages of planet…
We study particle dynamics in local two-dimensional simulations of self-gravitating accretion discs with a simple cooling law. It is well known that the structure which arises in the gaseous component of the disc due to a gravitational…