Related papers: The debris disk - terrestrial planet connection
Planet--planet scattering is a major dynamical mechanism able to significantly alter the architecture of a planetary system. In addition to that, it may also affect the formation and retention of a debris disk by the system. A violent…
Debris disc analysis and modelling provide crucial information about the structure and the processes at play in extrasolar planetary systems. In binary systems, this issue is more complex because the disc should in addition respond to the…
Structures observed in debris disks may be caused by gravitational interaction with planetary or stellar companions. These perturbed disks are often thought to indicate the presence of planets and offer insights into the properties of both…
During the late stage of planet formation when Mars-size cores appear, interactions among planetary cores can excite their orbital eccentricities, speed their merges and thus sculpture the final architecture of planet systems. This series…
Observations in the past decade have revealed extrasolar planets with a wide range of orbital semimajor axes and eccentricities. Based on the present understanding of planet formation via core accretion and oligarchic growth, we expect that…
Detectable debris discs are thought to require dynamical excitation (`stirring'), so that planetesimal collisions release large quantities of dust. We investigate the effects of the secular perturbations of a planet, which may lie at a…
Debris discs are commonly detected orbiting main-sequence stars, yet little is known regarding their fate as the star evolves to become a giant. Recent observations of radial velocity detected planets orbiting giant stars highlight this…
Extrasolar debris disks are the dust disks found around nearby main sequence stars arising from the break-up of asteroids and comets orbiting the stars. Far-IR surveys (e.g., with Herschel) showed that ~20% of stars host detectable dust…
Recent direct imaging discoveries suggest a new class of massive, distant planets around A stars. These widely separated giants have been interpreted as signs of planet formation driven by gravitational instability, but the viability of…
Most observed extrasolar planets have masses similar to, but orbits very different from, the gas giants of our solar system. Many are much closer to their parent stars than would have been expected and their orbits are often rather…
Observations of debris disks, the products of the collisional evolution of rocky planetesimals, can be used to trace planetary activity across a wide range of stellar types. The most common end points of stellar evolution are no exception…
The large eccentricities of many giant extrasolar planets may represent the endpoint of gravitational scattering in initially more crowded systems. If so, the early evolution of the giant planets is likely to be more restrictive of…
We develop an idealized dynamical model to predict the typical properties of outer extrasolar planetary systems, at radii beyond 5 AU. Our hypothesis is that dynamical evolution in outer planetary systems is controlled by a combination of…
The final assembly of terrestrial planets occurs via massive collisions, which can launch copious clouds of dust that are warmed by the star and glow in the infrared. We report the real-time detection of a debris-producing impact in the…
Debris belts on the periphery of planetary systems, encompassing the region occupied by planetary orbits, are massive analogues of the Solar system's Kuiper belt. They are detected by thermal emission of dust released in collisions amongst…
Terrestrial planets are thought to be the result of a vast number of gravitational interactions and collisions between smaller bodies. We use numerical simulations to show that practically identical initial conditions result in a wide array…
The inner Solar System contains a cloud of small (1-100 micron) dust grains created when small bodies-asteroids, comets, and Kuiper belt objects-collide and outgas. This dust cloud, the zodiacal cloud probably has extrasolar analogs,…
The orbital distributions of currently observed extrasolar giant planets allow marginally stable orbits for hypothetical, terrestrial planets. In this paper, we propose that many of these systems may not have additional planets on these…
Although there is abundant and diverse observational evidence in support of white dwarf stars hosting planets or debris disks which form in the catastrophic destruction of various planetary bodies, the key processes that explain these…
The formation of planets is one of the major unsolved problems in modern astrophysics. Planets are believed to form out of the material in circumstellar disks known to exist around young stars, and which are a by-product of the star…