Related papers: Circumstellar Disk Evolution: Constraining Theorie…
Recent imaging of protoplanetary disks with high resolution and contrast have revealed a striking variety of substructure. Of particular interest are cases where near-infrared scattered light images show evidence for low-intensity annular…
With n-body simulations, we model terrestrial circumbinary planet (CBP) formation with an initial surface density profile motivated by hydrodynamic circumbinary gas disc simulations. The binary plays an important role in shaping the initial…
The dust in the interstellar medium, that provides the material for forming stars - and circumstellar discs as a natural by-product - is known to have submicron sizes. As these discs are the sites of planet formation, those small grains are…
With hundreds of exoplanets detected, it is necessary to revisit giant planets accretion models to explain their mass distribution. In particular, formation of sub-jovian planets remains unclear, given the short timescale for the runaway…
The Galactic disk retains a vast amount of information about how it came to be, and how it evolved over cosmic time. However, we know very little about the secular processes associated with disk evolution. One major uncertainty is the…
In our current interpretation of the hierarchical structure of the universe it is well established that galaxies collide and merge with each other during their lifetime. If massive black holes (MBHs) reside in galactic centres, we expect…
The growing body of observational data on extrasolar planets and protoplanetary disks has stimulated intense research on planet formation and evolution in the past few years. The extremely diverse, sometimes unexpected physical and orbital…
Circumbinary gas disks are often observed to be misaligned to the binary orbit suggesting that planet formation may proceed in a misaligned disk. With N-body simulations we consider the formation of circumbinary terrestrial planets from a…
We conducted a survey for infrared excess emission from 16 nearby main sequence shell stars using the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS) on the Spitzer Space Telescope. Shell stars are early-type stars with narrow absorption…
Dusty protoplanetary disks surrounding young low-mass stars are the birthplaces of planets. Studies of the evolutionary timescales of such disks provide important constraints on the timescales of planet formation. Binary companions,…
The Kepler mission's discovery of a number of circumbinary planets orbiting close (a_p < 1.1 au) to the stellar binary raises questions as to how these planets could have formed given the intense gravitational perturbations the dual stars…
Star formation plays a central role in the evolution of galaxies and of the Universe as a whole. Studies of star-forming regions in the local universe have shown that star formation typically occurs in a clustered fashion. Building a…
Over the past decade, progress in observational capabilities, combined with theoretical advancements, have transformed our comprehension of the physics and chemistry during planet formation. Despite these important steps forward, open…
Planets are born from disks of gas and dust, and observations of protoplanetary disks are used to constrain the initial conditions of planet formation. However, dust mass measurements of Class II disks with ALMA have called into question…
Protostellar binaries harbour complex environment morphologies. Observations represent a snapshot in time, and projection and optical depth effects impair our ability to interpret them. Careful comparison with high-resolution models that…
Detailed models of galactic disk formation and evolution require knowledge about the initial conditions under which disk galaxies form, the boundary conditions that affect their secular evolution and the micro-physical processes that drive…
(Abridged) Giant planets are observed orbiting the primary stars of close binary systems. Such planets may have formed in compact circumprimary disks, under conditions much different than those around single stars. To quantify the effects…
We investigate the flow of material from highly misaligned and polar circumbinary discs that feed the formation of circumstellar discs around each binary component. With three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations we consider equal mass…
Since Protostars and Planets VI (PPVI), our knowledge of the global properties of protoplanetary and debris disks, as well as of young stars, has dramatically improved. At the time of PPVI, mm-observations and optical to near-infrared…
We investigate how the formation and structure of circumplanetary disks (CPDs) varies with planet mass and protoplanetary disk aspect ratio. Using static mesh refinement and a near-isothermal equation of state, we perform a small parameter…