Related papers: Deuterium burning in objects forming via the core …
Context: The principal mechanism by which brown dwarfs form, and its relation to the formation of higher-mass (i.e. hydrogen-burning) stars, is poorly understood. Aims: We advocate a new model for the formation of brown dwarfs. Methods: In…
White dwarfs and neutron stars are stellar objects with masses comparable to that of our sun. However, as the endpoint stages of stellar evolution, these objects do not sustain any thermonuclear burning and therefore can no longer support…
We present the modeling results of deuterium fractionation of water ice, H2, and the primary deuterium isotopologues of H3+ adopting physical conditions associated with the star and planet formation process. We calculated the deuterium…
In the core accretion model, gas-giant planets first form a solid core, which then accretes gas from a protoplanetary disk when the core exceeds a critical mass. Here, we model the atmosphere of a core that grows by accreting ice-rich…
In warm dark matter scenarios structure formation is suppressed on small scales with respect to the cold dark matter case, reducing the number of low-mass halos and the fraction of ionized gas at high redshifts and thus, delaying…
The primordial deuterium abundance is an important tracer of the fundamental physics taking place during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. It can be determined from absorption features along the line of sight to distant quasars. The quasar…
We compute the accretion efficiency of small solids, with radii 1 cm $\le$ Rs $\le$ 10 m, on planets embedded in gaseous disks. Planets have masses 3 $\le$ Mp $\le$ 20 Earth masses (Me) and orbit within 10 AU of a solar-mass star. Disk…
We examine the uncertainties in current planetary models and we quantify their impact on the planet cooling histories and mass-radius relationships. These uncertainties include (i) the differences between the various equations of state used…
An incident fast ion in the electronic stopping regime produces a track of excitations which can lead to particle ejection and cratering. Molecular Dynamics simulations of the evolution of the deposited energy were used to study the…
We present results of cosmological N-body hydrodynamic chemistry simulations of primordial structure growth and evolution in a scenario with warm dark matter (WDM) having a mass of 3 keV (thermal relic) and compare with a model consisting…
Recent spacecraft observations exploring solar system properties impact standard paradigms of the formation of stars, planets and comets. We stress the unexpected cloud of microscopic dust resulting from the DEEP IMPACT mission, and the…
Of the light elements, the primordial abundance of deuterium, (D/H)_p, provides the most sensitive diagnostic for the cosmological mass density parameter Omega_B. Recent high redshift (D/H) measurements are highly discrepant, although this…
The primordial abundance of deuterium (D/H) yields a measure of the density of baryons in the universe and is an important complement to determinations from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Indeed, the current small sample of…
We study the weak interaction processes taking place within a combustion flame that converts dense hadronic matter into quark matter in a compact star. Using the Boltzmann equation we follow the evolution of a small element of just…
The observed unusual behaviors of the orbits of Trans-Neptunian objects as well as the gravitational anomalies detected by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment can be explained by assuming the existence of a ninth planet in the…
We present the current status of the analytic theory of brown dwarf evolution and the lower mass limit of the hydrogen burning main sequence stars. In the spirit of a simplified analytic theory we also introduce some modifications to the…
Core Accretion, the most widely accepted scenario for planet formation, postulates existence of km-sized solid bodies, called planetesimals, arranged in a razor-thin disc in the earliest phases of planet formation. In the Tidal Downsizing…
Dark Matter in Earth intersecting orbits can scatter off the electrons and lose energy, and finally be gravitationally bound to Earth. Eventually they lose enough energy and accumulate at the core. It is assumed that DM annihilates/decays…
As increasingly precise information about the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background fluctuations is gathered with balloon and satellite experiments, interest has grown in foreground sources of opacity affecting these observations. One…
We evaluated the bias and variability on the fitted age and convective core overshooting parameter for evolved binary stars accounting for observational and internal uncertainties. We considered a binary system composed of a 2.50 $M_{\sun}$…