Related papers: The Origin of the Exoplanets
The core-accretion and disk instability models have so far been used to explain planetary formation. These models have different conditions, such as planet mass, disk mass, and metallicity for formation of gas giants. The core-accretion…
One of the most debated subjects in Astronomy since the discovery of exoplanets is how can we distinguish the most massive of such objects from very-low mass stars like Brown Dwarfs (BDs)? We have been looking for evidences of a difference…
Although there is abundant and diverse observational evidence in support of white dwarf stars hosting planets or debris disks which form in the catastrophic destruction of various planetary bodies, the key processes that explain these…
The growing database of exoplanets have shown us the statistical characteristics of various exoplanet populations, providing insight towards their origins. Observational evidence suggests that the process by which gas giants are conceived…
Exoplanets smaller than Neptune are common around red dwarf stars (M dwarfs), with those that transit their host star constituting the bulk of known temperate worlds amenable for atmospheric characterization. We analyze the masses and radii…
Revealing the mechanisms shaping the architecture of planetary systems is crucial for our understanding of their formation and evolution. In this context, it has been recently proposed that stellar clustering might be the key in shaping the…
Exo-planets are preferentially found around high metallicity main sequence stars. We aim at investigating whether evolved stars share this property, and what this tells about planet formation. Statistical tools and the basic concepts of…
The composition of rocky planets is strongly driven by the primordial materials in the protoplanetary disk, which can be inferred from the abundances of the host star. Understanding this compositional link is crucial for characterizing…
Stellar magnetic activity is an important factor in the formation and evolution of exoplanets. Magnetic phenomena like stellar flares, coronal mass ejections, and high-energy emission affect the exoplanetary atmosphere and its mass loss…
Analyses of exoplanet statistics suggest a trend of giant planet occurrence with host star mass, a clue to how planets like Jupiter form. One missing piece of the puzzle is the occurrence around late K dwarf stars (masses of 0.5-0.75Msun…
One of the unique aspects of Earth is that it has a fractionally large Moon, which is thought to have formed from a Moon-forming disk generated by a giant impact. The Moon stabilizes the Earth's spin axis at least by several degrees and…
Mass and radius of planets transiting their host stars are provided by radial velocity and photometric observations. Structural models of solid exoplanet interiors are then constructed by using equations of state for the radial density…
The formation of planets is one of the major unsolved problems in modern astrophysics. Planets are believed to form out of the material in circumstellar disks known to exist around young stars, and which are a by-product of the star…
A persistent question in exoplanet demographics is whether exoplanetary systems form from similar compositional building blocks to our own. Polluted white dwarf stars offer a unique way to address this question as they provide measurements…
Planets are thought to form via accretion from a remnant disk of gas and solids around a newly formed star. During this process material in the disk either remains bound to the star as part of either a planet, a smaller celestial body, or…
Binary stars are ubiquitous; the majority of solar-type stars exist in binaries. Exoplanet occurrence rate is suppressed in binaries, but some multiples do still host planets. Binaries cause observational biases in planet parameters, with…
The role of stellar metallicity in shaping planetary systems is central to our understanding of planet formation. While the core accretion paradigm is widely accepted as the dominant mechanism for forming low- and intermediate-mass planets,…
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…
The apparent regularity of the motion of the giant planets of our solar system suggested for decades that said planets formed onto orbits similar to the current ones and that nothing dramatic ever happened during their lifetime. The…
Most stars, perhaps even all stars, form in crowded stellar environments. Such star forming regions typically dissolve within ten million years, while others remain bound as stellar groupings for hundreds of millions to billions of years,…