Related papers: Coreless Terrestrial Exoplanets
Recent theoretical and experimental evidence indicates that many of the materials that are thought to exist in the mantles of terrestrial exoplanets will metallize and become good conductors of electricity at mantle pressures. This allows…
We present a calculation of the sedimentation of grains in a giant gaseous protoplanet such as that resulting from a disk instability of the type envisioned by Boss (1998). Boss (1998) has suggested that such protoplanets would form cores…
Giant planets are tens to thousands of times as massive as the Earth, and many times as large. Most of their volumes are occupied by hydrogen and helium, the primary constituents of the protostellar disks from which they formed.…
Massive giant planets, such as the ones being discovered by direct imaging surveys, likely experience the majority of their growth through a circumplanetary disc. We argue that the entropy of accreted material is determined by boundary…
Internal redox reactions may irreversibly alter the mantle composition and volatile inventory of terrestrial and super-Earth exoplanets and affect the prospects for atmospheric observations. The global efficacy of these mechanisms, however,…
The presence of rocky exoplanets with a large refractory carbon inventory is predicted by chemical evolution models of protoplanetary disks of stars with photospheric C/O >0.65, and by models studying the radial transport of refractory…
Interior compositions are key for our understanding of Earth-like exoplanets. The composition of the core can influence the presence of a magnetic dynamo and the strength of gravity on the planetary surface, both of which heavily impact…
Close-in giant planets (e.g. ``Hot Jupiters'') are thought to form far from their host stars and migrate inward, through the terrestrial planet zone, via torques with a massive gaseous disk. Here we simulate terrestrial planet growth during…
The composition of planets is largely determined by the chemical and dynamical evolution of the disk during planetesimal formation and growth. To predict the diversity of exoplanet compositions, previous works modeled planetesimal…
Super-Earths with orbital periods less than 100 days are extremely abundant around Sun-like stars. It is unlikely that these planets formed at their current locations. Rather, they likely formed at large distances from the star and…
The origin of close-in giant planets is a key open question in planet formation theory. The two leading models are (i) formation at the outer disk followed by migration and (ii) in situ formation. In this work we determine the atmospheric…
Several planets have recently been discovered around old metal-poor stars, implying that these planets are also old, formed in the early Universe. The canonical theory suggests that the conditions for their formation could not have existed…
The formation of life is an automatic stage in the consolidation of rocky or "terrestrial" planets. The organic (=carbonaceous) matter, light elements, gases, and water must "float" toward the surface and the heavier metals must sink toward…
Massive planetary cores ($\sim 10$ Earth masses) trigger rapid gas accretion to form gas giant planets \rev{such as} Jupiter and Saturn. We investigate the core growth and the possibilities for cores to reach such a critical core mass. At…
Mercury's core mass fraction (CMF) is ~0.7, more than double that of the other rocky planets in the solar system, which have CMFs of ~0.3. The origin of Mercury's large, iron-rich core remains unknown. Adding to this mystery, an elusive…
Giant planets are thought to have cores in their deep interiors, and the division into a heavy-element core and hydrogen-helium envelope is applied in both formation and structure models. We show that the primordial internal structure…
Prior work has found that a variety of terrestrial planetary compositions are expected to occur within known extrasolar planetary systems. However, such studies ignored the effects of giant planet migration, which is thought to be very…
Observations in the past decade have revealed extrasolar planets with a wide range of orbital semimajor axes and eccentricities. Based on the present understanding of planet formation via core accretion and oligarchic growth, we expect that…
Intermediate mass planets, from Super-Earth to Neptune-sized bodies, are the most common type of planets in the galaxy. The prevailing theory of planet formation, core-accretion, predicts significantly fewer intermediate-mass giant planets…
Numerical simulations show that the migration of growing planetary cores may be dominated by turbulent fluctuations in the protoplanetary disk, rather than by any mean property of the flow. We quantify the impact of this stochastic core…