Related papers: The debris disk - terrestrial planet connection

Planetesimals form in gas-rich protoplanetary disks around young stars. However, protoplanetary disks fade in about 10 Myr. The planetesimals (and also many of the planets) left behind are too dim to study directly. Fortunately, collisions…

Gas giant planets have been detected on eccentric orbits several hundreds of astronomical units in size around other stars. It has been proposed that even the Sun hosts a wide-orbit planet of 5-10 Earth masses, often called Planet Nine,…

Planetary systems can evolve dynamically even after the planets themselves have fully formed, and there is circumstantial evidence that most planetary systems become unstable after the disappearance of the gaseous protoplanetary disk.…

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…

Debris disks are tenuous, dust-dominated disks commonly observed around stars over a wide range of ages. Those around main sequence stars are analogous to the Solar System's Kuiper Belt and Zodiacal light. The dust in debris disks is…

Several stars show deep transits consistent with discs of roughly 1 Solar radius seen at moderate inclinations, likely surrounding planets on eccentric orbits. We show that this configuration arises naturally as a result of planet-planet…

Optically thin dusty disks around Main Sequence stars consist of debris from catastrophic collisions or from low erosion of long-lived planetesimals. Resolved observations of dusty disks have systematically evidenced asymmetries and annular…

Debris disks should not be completely gas-free, since there is second generation gas from outgassing of planetesimals and dust grains via sublimation, photodesorption, or collisions, generating a system of dust-to-gas ratio close to unity,…

Debris disks are evidence that stars harbor reservoirs of dust-producing plantesimals on spatial scales similar the solar system. Debris disks present a wide range of sizes and structural features and there is growing evidence that, in some…

Thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets have been identified in recent years. Consequently, theoretical research on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems has seen a boost, and the processes of planet-planet…

'Debris disks' are collections of small bodies around stars, such as the Asteroid Belt and Kuiper Belt in our Solar System. These disks are composed of objects smaller than planets, including asteroids, comets, dust, and dwarf planets. We…

Debris disks are dusty, gas-poor disks around main sequence stars (Backman & Paresce 1993; Lagrange, Backman & Artymowicz 2000; Zuckerman 2001). Micron-sized dust grains are inferred to exist in these systems from measurements of their…

The dust disks observed around mature stars are evidence that plantesimals are present in these systems on spatial scales that are similar to that of the asteroids and the KBOs in the Solar System. These dust disks (a.k.a. ``debris disks'')…

Excess emission, associated with warm, dust belts, commonly known as exozodis, has been observed around a third of nearby stars. The high levels of dust required to explain the observations are not generally consistent with steady-state…

The mass of solids in a young circumstellar disc may be the key factor in its efficiency in building planetesimals and planetary cores, and dust observed around young T Tauri and Herbig Ae stars can be used as a proxy for this initial solid…

Debris discs consist of belts of bodies ranging in size from dust grains to planetesimals; these belts are visible markers of planetary systems around other stars that can reveal the influence of extrasolar planets through their shape and…

Irregular satellites are the minor bodies found orbiting all four Solar System giant planets, with large semi-major axes, eccentricities, and inclinations. Previous studies have determined that the Solar System's irregular satellites are…

As gas giant planets evolve, they may scatter other planets far from their original orbits to produce hot Jupiters or rogue planets that are not gravitationally bound to any star. Here, we consider planets cast out to large orbital…

In most extrasolar planetary systems, the present orbits of known giant planets admit the existence of stable terrestrial planets. Those same giant planets, however, have typically eccentric orbits that hint at violent early dynamics less…

The solar system's dynamical state can be explained by an orbital instability among the giant planets. A recent model has proposed that the giant planet instability happened during terrestrial planet formation. This scenario has been shown…