Related papers: Understanding exoplanet formation, structure and e…
Direct imaging searches have begun to detect planetary and brown dwarf companions and to place constraints on the presence of giant planets at large separations from their host star. This work helps to motivate such planet searches by…
Giant planets and brown dwarfs are thought to form via a combination of pathways, including bottom-up mechanisms in which gas is accreted onto a solid core and top-down mechanisms in which gas collapses directly into a gravitationally-bound…
Observations of transiting extrasolar planets are of key importance to our understanding of planets because their mass, radius, and mass density can be determined. The CoRoT space mission allows us to achieve a very high photometric…
The observational properties of brown dwarfs pose challenges to the theory of star formation. Because their mass is much smaller than the typical Jeans mass of interstellar clouds, brown dwarfs are most likely formed through secondary…
The first mass-estimate of an exoplanet around a Sun-like star, 51 Peg b and the first radius measurement of an exoplanet, HD209458b pointed to the challenges of understanding the atmosphere, interior, and evolution of exoplanets including…
Brown dwarfs and very low mass stars are a significant fraction of stars in our galaxy, and they are interesting laboratories to investigate planet formation in extreme conditions of low temperature and densities. In addition, the dust…
In this paper, the CoRoT Exoplanet Science Team announces its 14th discovery. Herein, we discuss the observations and analyses that allowed us to derive the parameters of this system: a hot Jupiter with a mass of $7.6 \pm 0.6$ Jupiter…
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…
The masses and radii of exoplanets are fundamental quantities needed for their characterisation. Studying the different populations of exoplanets is important for understanding the demographics of the different planetary types, which can…
We investigate the interaction between an eccentric planet and a less massive external debris disc. This scenario could occur after planet-planet scattering or merging events. We characterise the evolution over a wide range of initial…
Earth-sized planets were observed in close-in orbits around M dwarfs. While more and more planets are expected to be uncovered around M dwarfs, theories of their formation and dynamical evolution are still in their infancy. We investigate…
We present evolutionary models for cool brown dwarfs and extra-solar giant planets. The models reproduce the main trends of observed methane dwarfs in near-IR color-magnitude diagrams. We also present evolutionary models for irradiated…
This paper compares the statistical features of the sample of discovered extrasolar planets with those of the secondaries in nearby spectroscopic binaries, in order to enable us to distinguish between the two populations. Based on 32 planet…
The discovery of planetary systems outside of the solar system has challenged some of the tenets of planetary formation. Among the difficult-to-explain observations, are systems with a giant planet orbiting a very-low mass star, such as the…
A new model for the formation of Jovian planets is proposed. We consider planets forming at large distances from a protostar (>100 AU) through direct fragmentation of a gas cloud, by the same formation mechanism as wide stellar and brown…
Owing to their similarities with giant exoplanets, brown dwarf companions of stars provide insights into the fundamental processes of planet formation and evolution. From their orbits, several brown dwarf companions are found to be more…
The lower limit to the distribution of orbital periods P for the current population of close-in exoplanets shows a distinctive discontinuity located at approximately one Jovian mass. Most smaller planets have orbital periods longer than…
Circumbinary configurations offer a test of planet formation in an altered environment, where the inner binary has perturbed a protoplanetary disc. Comparisons of the physical and orbital parameters between the circumbinary planet…
Exoplanets form from circumstellar protoplanetary discs whose fundamental properties (notably their extent, composition, mass, temperature and lifetime) depend on the host star properties, such as their mass and luminosity. B-stars are…
Many exoplanets have been discovered with radii of 1-4 Earth radii, between that of Earth and Neptune. A number of these are known to have densities consistent with solid compositions, while others are "sub-Neptunes" likely to have…