Related papers: The Heavy Element Composition of Disk Instability …
Recent observations of extrasolar gas giants suggest super-stellar C/O ratios in planetary atmospheres, while interior models of observed extrasolar giant planets additionally suggest high heavy element contents. Furthermore, recent…
We investigate the chemical composition of the solar system's giant planets atmospheres using a physical formation model with chemistry. The model incorporate disk evolution, pebbles and gas accretion, type I and II migration, simplified…
Super-Earths and mini-Neptunes exhibit great diversity in their compositional and orbital properties. Their bulk densities span a large range, from those dense enough to be purely rocky to those needing a substantial contribution from…
We investigate the formation of planetesimals via the gravitational instability of solids that have settled to the midplane of a circumstellar disk. Vertical shear between the gas and a subdisk of solids induces turbulent mixing which…
The large number of detected giant exoplanets offers the opportunity to improve our understanding of the formation mechanism, evolution, and interior structure of gas giant planets. The two main models for giant planet formation are core…
Gas giant planets play a fundamental role in shaping the orbital architecture of planetary systems and in affecting the delivery of volatile materials to terrestrial planets in the habitable zones. Current theories of gas giant planet…
We compute, for the first time, self-consistent models of planet growth including the effect of envelope enrichment. The change of envelope metallicity is assumed to be the result of planetesimal disruption or icy pebble sublimation. We…
Simulations of Jupiter's formation are presented that incorporate mixing of H-He with denser material entering the planet as solids. Heavy compounds and gas mix substantially when the planet becomes roughly as massive as Earth, because…
Doppler surveys have shown that more massive stars have significantly higher frequencies of giant planets inside $\sim$ 3 AU than lower mass stars, consistent with giant planet formation by core accretion. Direct imaging searches have begun…
Extrasolar planetary host stars are enriched in key planet-building elements. These enrichments have the potential to drastically alter the building blocks available for terrestrial planet formation. Here we report on the combination of…
The high density of the close-in extrasolar planet HD149026b suggests the presence of a huge core in the planet, which challenges planet formation theory. We first derive constraints on the amount of heavy elements and hydrogen/helium…
We discuss the interior structure and composition of giant planets, and how this structure changes as these planets cool and contract over time. Here we define giant planets as those that have an observable hydrogen-helium envelope, which…
We investigate the coupling between rock-size solids and gas during the formation of gas giant planets by disk fragmentation in the outer regions of massive disks. In this study, we use three-dimensional radiative hydrodynamics simulations…
Circumstantial evidence suggests that most known extra-solar planetary systems are survivors of violent dynamical instabilities. Here we explore how giant planet instabilities affect the formation and survival of terrestrial planets. We…
We discuss our current understanding of the interior structure and thermal evolution of giant planets. This includes the gas giants, such as Jupiter and Saturn, that are primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, as well as the "ice…
Planets with sizes between those of Earth and Neptune divide into two populations: purely rocky bodies whose atmospheres contribute negligibly to their sizes, and larger gas-enveloped planets possessing voluminous and optically thick…
Gas-giant planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn and massive exoplanets, were formed via the gas accretion onto the solid cores each with a mass of roughly ten Earth masses. However, rapid radial migration due to disk-planet interaction prevents…
The core-accretion mechanism for gas giant formation may be too slow to create all observed gas giant planets during reasonable gas disk lifetimes, but it has yet to be firmly established that the disk instability model can produce…
We present a new numerical framework to model the formation and evolution of giant planets. The code is based on the further development of the stellar evolution toolkit Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA). The model…
The composition and internal structure of gas giant exoplanets encode key information about their formation and evolution. We investigate how different assumed interior structures affect the inferred bulk metallicity and its correlation…