Related papers: Implications of the TTV-Detection of Close-In Terr…
In the coming decades, research in extrasolar planets aims to advance two goals: 1) detecting and characterizing low-mass planets increasingly similar to the Earth, and 2) improving our understanding of planet formation. We present a new…
To date, two planetary systems have been discovered with close-in, terrestrial-mass planets (< 5-10 Earth masses). Many more such discoveries are anticipated in the coming years with radial velocity and transit searches. Here we investigate…
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…
We investigate the formation of multiple-planet systems in the presence of a hot Jupiter using extended N-body simulations that are performed simultaneously with semi-analytic calculations. Our primary aims are to describe the planet…
The large number of exoplanets found to orbit their host stars in very close orbits have significantly advanced our understanding of the planetary formation process. It is now widely accepted that such short-period planets cannot have…
The discovery of planets around massive stars is important for understanding how planet formation and evolution is conditioned by different stellar environments. However, current planetary search surveys have failed to detect planets around…
Continuing our study of the effects of secular resonances on the formation of terrestrial planets in moderately close binary stars, we present here the results of an extensive numerical simulations of the formation of these objects.…
The detection of Earth-size exoplanets around low-mass stars -- in stars such as Proxima Centauri and TRAPPIST-1 -- provide an exceptional chance to improve our understanding of the formation of planets around M stars and brown dwarfs. We…
Planets with several Earth masses and a few day orbital periods have been discovered through radial velocity and transit surveys. Regardless of their formation mechanism, a key evolution issue is the efficiency of their retention near their…
Close-in giant planets are thought to have formed in the cold outer regions of planetary systems and migrated inward, passing through the orbital parameter space occupied by the terrestrial planets in our own Solar System. We present…
Both ground and space-based transit observatories are poised to significantly increase the number of known transiting planets and the number of precisely measured transit times. The variation in a planet's transit times may be used to infer…
Hot Jupiters are giant Jupiter-like exoplanets that orbit 100x closer to their host stars than Jupiter does to the Sun. These planets presumably form in the outer part of the primordial disc from which both the central star and surrounding…
In recent years we have been witnessing the discovery of one extrasolar gas giant after another. Now the time has come to detect more low-mass planets like Super-Earths and Earth-like objects. An interesting question to ask is: where should…
We explore the possibility that the transit signature of an Earth-size planet can be detected in spectroscopic velocity shifts via the Rossiter effect. Under optimistic but not unrealistic conditions, it should be possible to detect a large…
NASA's TESS mission is expected to discover hundreds of M dwarf planets. However, few studies focus on how planets form around low-mass stars. We aim to better characterize the formation process of M dwarf planets to fill this gap and aid…
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…
Massive cores of the giant planets are thought to have formed in a gas disk by accretion of pebble-size particles whose accretional cross-section is enhanced by aerodynamic gas drag [1][2]. A commonly held view is that the terrestrial…
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…
We derive the transit timing variations (TTVs) of two planets near a second order mean motion resonance on nearly circular orbits. We show that the TTVs of each planet are given by sinusoids with a frequency of $j n_2-(j-2)n_1$, where $j…
We perform numerical calculations of the expected transit timing variations (TTVs) induced on a Hot-Jupiter by an Earth-mass perturber. Motivated by the recent discoveries of retrograde transiting planets, we concentrate on an investigation…