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Exomoon detections might be feasible with NASA's Kepler or ESA's upcoming PLATO mission or the ground-based E-ELT. To use observational resources most efficiently we need to know where the largest, most easily detected moons can form. We…
Juno and Cassini have shown that Jupiter and Saturn likely contain extended gradients of heavy elements. Yet, how these gradients can survive over billions of years remains an open question. Classical convection theories predict rapid…
Jupiter's enhancement in nitrogen relative to hydrogen when compared to the Sun has been interpreted as evidence that its early formation occurred beyond the N$_{2}$ snowline ($\sim$ 20-40 AU). However, the rapid growth necessary to form…
Modeling the formation of cold giant planets around M dwarfs is difficult because their disks may not contain enough solids to form massive cores and because forming giants are expected to migrate inward through disk interactions. It is…
This article provides an overview of how models of giant planet interiors are constructed. We review measurements from past space missions that provide constraints for the interior structure of Jupiter. We discuss typical three-layer…
The elemental compositions of planet hosting stars serve as proxies for the primordial compositions of the protoplanetary disks within which the planets form. The temperature profile of the disk governs the condensation fronts of various…
We study the formation of a giant gas planet by the core--accretion gas--capture process, with numerical simulations, under the assumption that the planetary core forms in the center of an anti-cyclonic vortex. The presence of the vortex…
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…
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…
A primary goal of exoplanet characterization is to use a planet's current composition to understand how that planet formed. For example, the C/O ratio has long been recognized as carrying important information on the chemistry of volatile…
We present results from ab initio simulations of liquid water-hydrogen mixtures in the range from 2 to 70 GPa and from 1000 to 6000 K, covering conditions in the interiors of ice giant planets and parts of the outer envelope of gas giant…
(Abridged) We consider models of gas giant planets forming in protoplanetary disks consisting of solid cores with gaseous envelopes in contact with their critical Hill spheres while accreting gas from the surrounding disk.We suppose the…
Some exoplanets have much higher densities than expected from stellar abundances of planet-forming elements. There are two theories - metal-rich formation hypothesis and naked core hypothesis - that explain how formation and evolution can…
Rocky planets are common around other stars, but their atmospheric properties remain largely unconstrained. Thanks to a wealth of recent planet discoveries and upcoming advances in observing capability, we are poised to characterize the…
The evolution of gravitationally unstable protoplanetary gaseous disks has been studied with the use of three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations with unprecedented resolution. We have considered disks with initial…
During the formation of rocky planets, the surface environments of growing protoplanets were dramatically different from those of present-day planets. The release of gravitational energy during accretion would have maintained a molten…
Massive planetary cores ($\sim 10$ Earth masses) trigger rapid gas accretion to form gas giant planets \rev{such as} Jupiter and Saturn. We investigate the core growth and the possibilities for cores to reach such a critical core mass. At…
The thermal evolution of rocky planets on geological timescales (Gyr) depends on the heat input from the long-lived radiogenic elements potassium, thorium, and uranium. Concentrations of the latter two in rocky planet mantles are likely to…
Observed Hot Jupiters exhibit a wide range of physical properties. For a given mass, many planets have inflated radii, while others are surprisingly compact and may harbor large central cores. Motivated by the observational sample, this…
In an ongoing effort to understand planet formation the link between the chemistry of the protoplanetary disk and the properties of resulting planets have long been a subject of interest. These connections have generally been made between…