Related papers: Dynamics of secular evolution
Recent works demonstrated that the dynamics caused by the planetary oblateness coupled with the solar radiation pressure can be described through a model based on singly-averaged equations of motion. The coupled perturbations affect the…
Most planetary systems -- including our own -- are born within stellar clusters, where interactions with neighboring stars can help shape the system architecture. This paper develops an orbit-averaged formalism to characterize the cluster's…
We consider the evolution of a binary system interacting due to tidal effects without restriction on the orientation of the orbital, and where significant, spin angular momenta, and orbital eccentricity. We work in the low tidal forcing…
This paper studies the long term evolution of planetary systems containing short-period planets, including the effects of tidal circularization, secular excitation of eccentricity by companion planets, and stellar damping. For planetary…
Fragmentation and fission of giant molecular clouds occasionally results in a pair of gravitationally bound star clusters that orbit their mutual centre of mass for some time, under the influence of internal and external perturbations. We…
This is a summary of my lectures during the 2011 IAC Winter School in Puerto de la Cruz. I give an introduction to the field of stellar populations in galaxies, and highlight some new results. Since the title of the Winter School was {\it…
We consider the use of N-body simulations for studying the evolution of rich star clusters (i.e. globular clusters). The dynamical processes included in this study are restricted to gravitational (point-mass) interactions, the steady tidal…
We aim to investigate the influence of the eccentricity and inclination damping due to planet-disc interactions on the final configurations of the systems, generalizing previous studies on the combined action of the gas disc and…
We investigate the dynamical evolution of hierarchical three-body systems under the effect of tides, when the ratio of the orbital semi-major axes is small and the mutual inclination is relatively large (greater than 20 degrees). Using the…
We discuss the evolution of solar coronal element abundances over an active region lifetime. Magneto-convection drives the complexity of magnetic fields that emerge above the photosphere. This complexity is dissipated, together with that of…
Three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamic simulations of shell oxygen burning (Meakin and Arnett, 2007b) exhibit bursty, recurrent fluctuations in turbulent kinetic energy. These are shown to be due to a general instability of the convective…
New observations in favour of a significant role of secular evolution are reviewed: central star formation boosted in pseudo-bulge barred galaxies, relations between bulge and disk, evidence for rejuvenated bulges. Numerical simulations…
We present a comprehensive series of $N$-body as well as $N$-body + SPH simulations to study the secular evolution of the structure of disk galaxies. Our simulations are organized in a hierarchy of increasing complexity, ranging from…
The disruption of stellar systems, such as open clusters or stellar complexes, stands out as one of the most reasonable physical processes accounting for the young moving groups observed in the solar neighbourhood. In the present study we…
Hierarchical quadruple systems arise naturally in stellar binaries and triples that harbour planets. Examples are hot Jupiters (HJs) in stellar triple systems, and planetary companions to HJs in stellar binaries. The secular dynamical…
We present a kinetic theory for the evolution of the phase-space distribution of dark matter particles in galaxy halos in the presence of a cosmological spectrum of fluctuations. This theory introduces a new way to model the formation and…
Following the general numerical analysis of Melita and Woolfson (1996), I showed in a recent paper that a restricted, planar, circular planetary system consisting of Sun, Jupiter and Saturn would be captured in a near (2:1) resonance when…
By means of three dimensional, high resolution hydrodynamical simulations we study the orbital evolution of weakly eccentric or inclined low-mass protoplanets embedded in gaseous discs subject to thermal diffusion. We consider both…
We study the time evolution of two protoplanets still embedded in a protoplanetary disk. The results of two different numerical approaches are presented and compared. In the first approach, the motion of the disk material is computed with…
Gravitational coupling between a protoplanetary disc and an embedded eccentric planet is an important, long-standing problem, which has been not yet been conclusively explored. Here we study the torque and associated orbital evolution of an…