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We study the efficiency of forming large bodies, starting from a sea of equal-sized planetesimals. This is likely one of the earlier steps of planet formation and relevant for the formation of the asteroid belt, the Kuiper belt and…
In laboratory experiments, we studied collisions of ensembles of compact (filling factor 0.33) millimeter dust aggregates composed of micrometer quartz grains. We used cylindrical aggregates, triangular aggregates, square aggregates, and…
We consider the ability of three models - impacts, captures, and collisional cascades - to account for a bright cloud of dust in Fomalhaut b. Our analysis is based on a novel approach to the power-law size distribution of solid particles…
Pebble accretion is a new mechanism to quickly grow the cores of planets. In pebble accretion, gravity and gas drag conspire to yield large collisional cross sections for small particles in protoplanetary disks. However, before pebble…
The growth of planetesimals is an essential step in planet formation. Decimetre-size dust agglomerates mark a transition point in this growth process. In laboratory experiments we simulated the formation, evolution, and properties of…
The dynamics of planetesimals plays an important role in planet formation, because their velocity distribution sets the growth rate to larger bodies. When planetesimals form in protoplanetary discs, their orbits are nearly circular and…
Planetary embryos are built through the collisional growth of 10-100 km sized objects called planetesimals, a formerly large population of objects, of which asteroids, comets and Kuiper-Belt objects represent the leftovers from planet…
The physics of planet formation is investigated using a population synthesis approach. We develop a simple model for planetary growth including pebble and gas accretion, and orbital migration in an evolving protoplanetary disk. The model is…
The journey from dust particle to planetesimal involves physical processes acting on scales ranging from micrometers (the sticking and restructuring of aggregates) to hundreds of astronomical units (the size of the turbulent protoplanetary…
Context: Sticking of colliding dust particles through van der Waals forces is the first stage in the grain growth process in protoplanetary disks, eventually leading to the formation of comets, asteroids and planets. A key aspect of the…
State-of-the-art planet formation models are now capable of accounting for the full spectrum of known planet types. This comes at the cost of increasing complexity of the models, which calls into question whether established links between…
In the standard scenario of planet formation, terrestrial planets and the cores of the giant planets are formed by accretion of planetesimals. As planetary embryos grow the planetesimal velocity dispersion increases due to gravitational…
We use a new multiannulus planetesimal accretion code to investigate the evolution of a planetesimal disk following a moderately close encounter with a passing star. The calculations include fragmentation, gas and Poynting-Robertson drag,…
Accumulation of dust and ice particles into planetesimals is an important step in the planet formation process. Planetesimals are the seeds of both terrestrial planets and the solid cores of gas and ice giants forming by core accretion.…
The debate over whether kilometer-sized solids, or planetesimals, assemble by collision-induced chemical sticking or by gravity-driven unstable modes remains unsettled. In light of recent work showing that gravitational growth can occur…
In recent years, the tribocharging of colliding and bouncing submillimeter (submm) particles has been studied as a possible mechanism promoting the formation of large pebbles on centimeter (cm) to decimeter (dm) scales in protoplanetary…
The collision dynamics of dusty bodies are crucial for planetesimal formation. Especially decimeter agglomerates are important in the different formation models. Therefore, in continuation of our experiments on mutual decimeter collisions,…
Planetesimal belts are invoked to explain the prolonged existence of debris disks. Important parameters to model their collisional evolution and to compute the dust production rate are the intrinsic probability of collision $P_i$ and the…
After 25 years of laboratory research on protoplanetary dust agglomeration, a consistent picture of the various processes that involve colliding dust aggregates has emerged. Besides sticking, bouncing and fragmentation, other effects, like,…
We study the collision rates and velocities for point-particles of different sizes in turbulent flows. We construct fits for the collision rates at specified velocities (effectively a collisional velocity probability distribution) for…