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We use resistive magnetohydrodynamical simulations with the nested grid technique to study the formation of protoplanetary disks around protostars from molecular cloud cores that provide the realistic environments for planet formation. We…
Giant planets acquire gas, ices and rocks during the early formation stages of planetary systems and thus inform us on the formation process itself. Proceeding from inside out, examining the connections between the deep interiors and the…
Recent discoveries of strongly misaligned transiting exoplanets pose a challenge to the established planet formation theory which assumes planetary systems to form and evolve in isolation. However, the fact that the majority of stars…
Giant impacts, the collisions between planetary embryos, play a crucial role in sculpting the planets and their orbital architectures. Numerical simulations have advanced our understanding of these events, enabling estimations of mass and…
Theories of planet formation predict the birth of giant planets in the inner, dense, and gas-rich regions of the circumstellar disks around young stars. These are the regions from which strong CO emission is expected. Observations have so…
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…
Inverse techniques are used to extract information about an exoplanet's atmosphere. These techniques are prone to biased results if the appropriate forward model is not used. One assumption used in a forward model is to assume that the…
Statistical analyses from exoplanet surveys around low-mass stars indicate that super-Earth and Neptune-mass planets are more frequent than gas giants around such stars, in agreement with core accretion theory of planet formation. Using…
The physical characterization of exoplanets will require to take spectra at several orbital positions. For that purpose, a direct imaging capability is necessary. Direct imaging requires an efficient stellar suppression mechanism,…
The recent high spatial/spectral resolution observations have enabled constraining formation mechanisms of giant planets, especially at the final stages. The current interpretation of such observations is that these planets undergo…
The currently feasible method of detection of Earth-mass planets is transit photometry, with detection probability decreasing with a planet's distance from the star. The existence or otherwise of short-period terrestrial planets will tell…
The origin of close-in giant planets is a key open question in planet formation theory. The two leading models are (i) formation at the outer disk followed by migration and (ii) in situ formation. In this work we determine the atmospheric…
Here a physical model for terminating giant planet formation is outlined and compared to other methods of late-stage giant planet formation. As has been pointed out before, gas accreting into a gap and onto the planet will encounter the…
The ongoing discovery of terrestrial exoplanets accentuates the importance of studying planetary evolution for a wide range of initial conditions. We perform thermal evolution simulations for generic terrestrial planets with masses ranging…
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…
Determination of an exoplanet's mass is a key to understanding its basic properties, including its potential for supporting life. To date, mass constraints for exoplanets are predominantly based on radial velocity (RV) measurements, which…
Despite the revolution in our knowledge resulting from the detection of planets around mature stars, we know almost nothing about planets orbiting young stars because rapid rotation and active photospheres preclude detection by radial…
The field of exoplanetary science has seen discovery rates increase dramatically over recent years, due largely to the data from the Kepler mission. Even so, individual discoveries of planets orbiting nearby stars are very important for…
The magnetosphere of an exoplanet has yet to be unambiguously detected. Investigations of star-planet interaction and neutral atomic hydrogen absorption during transit to detect magnetic fields in hot Jupiters have been inconclusive, and…
In a recent paper we proposed that the giant planets' primordial orbits may have been eccentric (~0.05), and used a suite of dynamical simulations to show outcomes of the giant planet instability that are consistent with their present-day…