Related papers: Planets: Power Laws and Classification
We show that short-term perturbations among massive planets in multiple planet systems can result in radial velocity variations of the central star which differ substantially from velocity variations derived assuming the planets are…
Planets in close-in orbit interact with the magnetized wind of their hosting star. This magnetic interaction was proposed to be a source for enhanced emissions in the chromosphere of the star, and to participate in setting the migration…
Determining planetary habitability is a complex matter, as the interplay between a planet's physical and atmospheric properties with stellar insolation has to be studied in a self consistent manner. Standardized atmospheric models for…
The planets magnetic field has been explained based on the dynamo theory, which presents as many difficulties in mathematical terms as well as in predictions. It proves to be extremely difficult to calculate the dipolar magnetic moment of…
Motivated by the trends found in the observed sample of extrasolar planets, this paper determines tidal equilibrium states for forming planetary systems --- subject to conservation of angular momentum, constant total mass, and fixed orbital…
Low-mass planets have an extraordinarily diverse range of bulk compositions, from primarily rocky worlds to those with deep gaseous atmospheres. As techniques for measuring the masses of exoplanets are advancing the field towards the…
The discovery of now about 20 extrasolar planets orbiting solar-type stars with properties quite different from those in our Solar System has raised many questions about the formation and evolution of planets. The tidal interaction between…
Exoplanet characterization is one of the main foci of current exoplanetary science. For super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, we mostly rely on mass and radius measurements, which allow to derive the body's mean density and give a rough estimate…
Of all planet-finding techniques, microlensing is potentially the most sensitive to Earth-mass planets. However, microlensing lightcurves generically yield only the planet-star mass ratio: the mass itself is uncertain to a factor of a few.…
Two of TESS's major science goals are to measure masses for 50 planets smaller than 4 Earth radii and to discover high-quality targets for atmospheric characterization efforts. It is important that these two goals are linked by quantifying…
We examine the predictions of the core accretion - gas capture model concerning the efficiency of planet formation around stars with various masses. First, we follow the evolution of gas and solids from the moment when all solids are in the…
We seek to characterize giant-planet systems by their gravitational scattering properties. We do this to a given system by integrating it numerically along with a large number of hypothetical small bodies that are initially in eccentric…
Star counts at high and intermediate galactic latitudes, in the visible and the near infrared, are used to determine the density law and the initial mass function of the thick disc population. The combination of shallow fields dominated by…
How good is our universe at making habitable planets? The answer to this depends on which factors are important for life: Does a planet need to be Earth mass? Does it need to be inside the temperate zone? are systems with hot Jupiters…
Planets are thought to form via accretion from a remnant disk of gas and solids around a newly formed star. During this process material in the disk either remains bound to the star as part of either a planet, a smaller celestial body, or…
Planet formation models have been developed during the last years in order to try to reproduce the observations of both the solar system, and the extrasolar planets. Some of these models have partially succeeded, focussing however on…
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…
Observations suggest a slower stellar rotation relative to gas rotation in the outer part of the Milky Way Galaxy. This difference could be attributed to an interaction with the interstellar magnetic field. In a simple model, fields of…
We constrain the densities of Earth- to Neptune-size planets around very cool (Te =3660-4660K) Kepler stars by comparing 1202 Keck/HIRES radial velocity measurements of 150 nearby stars to a model based on Kepler candidate planet radii and…
We consider trends resulting from two formation mechanisms for short-period super-Earths: planet-planet scattering and migration. We model scenarios where these planets originate near the snow line in ``cold finger'' circumstellar disks.…