Related papers: Hot Super Earths: disrupted young jupiters?
Reproducing Uranus and Neptune remains a challenge for simulations of solar system formation. The ice giants' peculiar obliquities suggest that they both suffered giant collisions during their formation. Thus, there must have been an epoch…
It is likely that multiple bodies with masses between those of Mars and Earth ("planetary embryos") formed in the outer planetesimal disk of the solar system. Some of these were likely scattered by the giant planets into orbits with…
Short period planets are subject to intense energetic irradiations from their stars. It has been shown that this can lead to significant atmospheric mass-loss and create smaller mass planets. Here, we analyse whether the evaporation…
Simulations predict that hot super-Earth sized exoplanets can have their envelopes stripped by photo-evaporation, which would present itself as a lack of these exoplanets. However, this absence in the exoplanet population has escaped a firm…
Massive exoplanets are observed preferentially around high metallicity ([Fe/H]) stars while low-mass exoplanets do not show such an effect. This so-called planet-metallicity correlation generally favors the idea that most observed gas…
A large fraction of stars host one or multiple close-in super-Earth planets. There is an active debate about whether these planets formed in situ or at greater distances from the central star and migrated to their current position. It has…
The existence of giant extrasolar planets on short-period orbits ("hot Jupiters") challenges planet formation theories because such planets are difficult to form close to the star. High-eccentricity migration is a leading explanation, in…
Using N-body simulations with planet-disk interactions, we present a mechanism capable of forming compact systems of hot super Earths such as Kepler 11. Recent studies show that outward migration is common in the inner parts of radiative…
The size distribution of TNOs in the Kuiper Belt provides crucial insights into the formation and evolution of the outer Solar System. Recent observational surveys, including OSSOS++, have revealed that dynamically cold and hot TNO…
A massive planet in a protoplanetary disc will open a gap in the disc material which acts as a transition between Type I and Type II planetary migration. Type II migration is slower than Type I migration, however it is still desirable to…
The distribution of eccentricities e of extra-solar planets with semi-major axes a > 0.2 AU is very uniform, and values for e are generally large. For a < 0.2 AU, eccentricities are much smaller (most e < 0.2), a characteristic widely…
Radial velocity searches for extrasolar planets have recently detected several very low mass (7-20M_Earth) planets in close orbits with periods <10 days. We consider the prospects for detecting the analogs of these planets in Galactic open…
Traditional thermal evolution models of giant planets employ arbitrary initial conditions selected more for computational expediency than physical accuracy. Since the initial conditions are eventually forgotten by the evolving planet, this…
Low-mass planets that are in the process of growing larger within protoplanetary disks exchange torques with the disk and change their semi-major axis accordingly. This process is called type I migration and is strongly dependent on the…
During their formation, planets form large, hot atmospheres due to the ongoing accretion of solids. It has been customary to assume that all solids end up at the center constituting a "core" of refractory materials, whereas the envelope…
The unexpected discovery of hot Jupiters challenged the classical theory of planet formation inspired by our solar system. Until now, the origin and evolution of hot Jupiters are still uncertain. Determining their age distribution and…
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 study protoplanetary disc evolution assuming that angular momentum transport is driven by gravitational instability at large radii, and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in the hot inner regions. At radii of the order of 1 AU such…
Observations of exoplanets over the last two decades have revealed a new class of Jupiter-size planets with orbital periods of a few days, the so-called "hot Jupiters". Recent measurements using the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect have shown…
We explore whether close-in super-Earths were formed as rocky bodies that failed to grow fast enough to become the cores of gas giants before the natal protostellar disk dispersed. We model the failed cores' inward orbital migration in the…