Related papers: Planet Formation: Statistics of spin rates and obl…
We recommend an intensive effort to survey and understand the obliquity distribution of small close-in extrasolar planets over the coming decade. The orbital obliquities of exoplanets--i.e., the relative orientation between the planetary…
Exoplanets are organized in a broad array of orbital configurations that reflect their formation along with billions of years of dynamical processing through gravitational interactions. This history is encoded in the angular momentum…
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…
Recent exoplanet surveys revealed that for solar-type stars, close-in Super-Earths are ubiquitous and many of them are in multi-planet systems. These systems are more compact than the Solar System's terrestrial planets. However, there have…
The recent detection of planets around very low mass stars raises the question of the formation, composition and potential habitability of these objects. We use planetary system formation models to infer the properties, in particular their…
We review the problem of the formation of terrestrial planets, with particular emphasis on the interaction of dynamical and geochemical models. The lifetime of gas around stars in the process of formation is limited to a few million years…
Terrestrial planets are thought to be the result of a vast number of gravitational interactions and collisions between smaller bodies. We use numerical simulations to show that practically identical initial conditions result in a wide array…
We use a hybrid, multiannulus, n-body-coagulation code to investigate the growth of km-sized planetesimals at 0.4-2 AU around a solar-type star. After a short runaway growth phase, protoplanets with masses of roughly 10^26 g and larger form…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
With the discovery of now more than 500 exoplanets, we present a statistical analysis of the planetary orbital periods and their relationship to the rotation periods of their parent stars. We test whether the structure of planetary orbits,…
The physics of planet formation is investigated using a population synthesis approach. We develop a simple model for planetary growth including pebble and gas accretion, and orbital migration in an evolving protoplanetary disk. The model is…
Evidence of mutually inclined planetary orbits has been reported for giant planets these last years. Here we aim to study the impact of eccentric and inclined massive giant planets on the terrestrial planet formation process, and…
According to the sequential accretion model, giant planet formation is based first on the formation of a solid core which, when massive enough, can gravitationally bind gas from the nebula to form the envelope. In order to trigger the…
We address three questions regarding solar system planets. What determined their number? Why are their orbits nearly circular and coplanar? How long did they take to form? Runaway accretion in a disk of small bodies resulted in a tiny…
This decade has seen the first measurements of extrasolar planetary obliquities, characterizing how an exoplanet's spin axis is oriented relative to its orbital axis. These measurements are enabled by combining projected rotational…
The spin-orbit obliquity of a planetary system constraints its formation history. A large obliquity may either indicate a primordial misalignment between the star and its gaseous disk or reflect the effect of different mechanisms tilting…
Our understanding of the process of terrestrial planet formation has grown markedly over the past 20 years, yet key questions remain. This review begins by first addressing the critical, earliest stage of dust coagulation and concentration.…
We have investigated the obliquity evolution of terrestrial planets in habitable zones (at ~ 1AU) in extrasolar planetary systems, due to tidal interactions with their satellite and host star with wide varieties of satellite-to-planet mass…
With the increasing number of detected exoplanet samples, the statistical properties of planetary systems have become much clearer. In this review, we summarize the major statistics that have been revealed mainly by radial velocity and…
Stars are commonly formed in binary systems, which provide a natural laboratory for studying planet formation in extreme conditions. In our first paper (Paper I) of a series Xie et al. (2011), we have shown that the intermediate stage -…