Related papers: The Invisible Majority? Evolution and Detection of…
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) will make precise astrometric measurements that can be used to detect planets around nearby stars. We have simulated SIM observations and estimated the ability of SIM to detect planets with given…
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…
Small planets, 1-4x the size of Earth, are extremely common around Sun-like stars, and surprisingly so, as they are missing in our solar system. Recent detections have yielded enough information about this class of exoplanets to begin…
The radii and orbital periods of 4000+ confirmed/candidate exoplanets have been precisely measured by the Kepler mission. The radii show a bimodal distribution, with two peaks corresponding to smaller planets (likely rocky) and larger…
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…
(Abridged) We consider models of gas giant planets forming in protoplanetary disks consisting of solid cores with gaseous envelopes in contact with their critical Hill spheres while accreting gas from the surrounding disk.We suppose the…
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…
We develop a pebble-driven model to study the formation and evolution of planets around stars in the mass range of 0.08 and 1 solar mass. The growth and migration of a large number of individual protoplanetary embryos are simulated in a…
The recent discoveries of massive planets on ultra-wide orbits of HR 8799 (Marois et al. 2008) and Fomalhaut (Kalas et al. 2008) present a new challenge for planet formation theorists. Our goal is to figure out which of three giant planet…
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…
Observations of exoplanetary systems provide clues about the intrinsic distribution of planetary systems, their architectures, and how they formed. We develop a forward modelling framework for generating populations of planetary systems and…
Observational surveys for extrasolar planets probe the diverse outcomes of planet formation and evolution. These surveys measure the frequency of planets with different masses, sizes, orbital characteristics, and host star properties. Small…
We constrain the densities of Earth- to Neptune-size planets around very cool (Te =3660-4660K) Kepler stars by comparing 1202 Keck/HIRES radial velocity measurements of 150 nearby stars to a model based on Kepler candidate planet radii and…
Microlensing is potentially sensitive to multiple-planet systems containing analogs of all the solar system planets except Mercury, as well as to free floating planets. I review the landscape of microlensing planet searches, beginning with…
Planets less massive than about 10 MEarth are expected to have no massive H-He atmosphere and a cometary composition (50% rocks, 50% water, by mass) provided they formed beyond the snowline of protoplanetary disks. Due to inward migration,…
We develop a simple model for computing planetary formation based on the core instability model for the gas accretion and the oligarchic growth regime for the accretion of the solid core. In this model several planets can form…
Transitional disks are protoplanetary disks with large and deep central holes in the gas, possibly carved by young planets. Dong, R., & Dawson, R. 2016, ApJ, 825, 7 simulated systems with multiple giant planets that were capable of carving…
Direct imaging has confirmed the existence of substellar companions on wide orbits. To understand the formation and evolution mechanisms of these companions, the full population properties must be characterized. We aim at detecting giant…
In this paper we present a statistical study of the environments of 49 galaxies in which there is gas- or stellar- counterrotation. The number of possible companions in the field (to apparent magnitude 22), their size and concentration were…
Prevailing $N$-body planet formation models typically start with lunar-mass embryos and show a general trend of rapid migration of massive planetary cores to the inner Solar System in the absence of a migration trap. This setup cannot…