Related papers: Planets in the Early Universe
The formation of the first generations of stars at redshifts z > 15-20 signaled the transition from the simple initial state of the universe to one of increasing complexity. We here review recent progress in understanding the assembly…
To date, several exoplanets have been discovered orbiting stars with close binary companions (a~<30 AU). The fact that planets can form in these dynamically challenging environments implies that planet formation must be a robust process.…
The ubiquity of planets poses an interesting question: when first planets are formed in galaxies. We investigate this problem by adopting a theoretical model developed for understanding the statistical properties of exoplanets. Our model is…
The physical and chemical conditions in young protoplanetary disks set the boundary conditions for planet formation. Although the dust in disks is relatively easily detected as a far-IR photometric ``excess'' over the expected photospheric…
We hypothesise that planets are made by tidal downsizing of migrating giant planet embryos. The proposed scheme for planet formation consists of these steps: (i) a massive young protoplanetary disc fragments at R ~ several tens to hundreds…
We develop a semi-analytic model for planet formation during the pre-main sequence contraction phase of a low mass star. During this evolution, the stellar magnetosphere maintains a fixed ratio between the inner disk radius and the stellar…
The first stars fundamentally transformed the early Universe through their production of energetic radiation and the first heavy chemical elements. The impact on cosmic evolution sensitively depends on their initial mass function (IMF),…
The extreme outer Galaxy (EOG), the region with a Galactic radius of more than 18 kpc, is known to have very low metallicity, about one-tenth that of the solar neighborhood. We obtained deep near-infrared (NIR) images of two very young…
As stellar compositions evolve over time in the Milky Way, so will the resulting planet populations. In order to place planet formation in the context of Galactic chemical evolution, we make use of a large ($N = 5\,325$) stellar sample…
Celestial bodies with a mass of M ~ 10 M_Jup have been found orbiting nearby stars. It is unknown whether these objects formed like gas-giant planets through core accretion or like stars through gravitational instability. I show that…
Flattened, rotating disks of cool dust and gas extending for tens to hundreds of AU are found around almost all low mass stars shortly after their birth. These disks generally persist for several Myr, during which time some material…
The terrestrial planets are believed to have formed by violent collisions of tens of lunar- to Mars-size protoplanets at time t<200 Myr after the protoplanetary gas disk dispersal (t_0). The solar system giant planets rapidly formed during…
By measuring the elemental abundances of a star, we can gain insight into the composition of its initial gas cloud -- the formation site of the star and its planets. Planet formation requires metals, the availability of which is determined…
The correlation between stellar metallicity and the presence of giant planets is well established. It has been tentatively explained by the possible increase of planet formation probability in stellar disks with enhanced amount of metals.…
We have measured the mass of metals in the molecular gas in 13 submillimetre galaxies at z~4 in which the gas, based on previous observations, lies in a cold rotating disk. We measured the metal masses using either the submillimetre line or…
The formation of the first galaxies at redshifts z ~ 10-15 signaled the transition from the simple initial state of the universe to one of ever increasing complexity. We here review recent progress in understanding their assembly process…
It has recently been noted that many discs around T Tauri stars appear to comprise only a few Jupiter-masses of gas and dust. Using millimetre surveys of discs within six local star-formation regions, we confirm this result, and find that…
While it is widely accepted that planets are formed in protoplanetary disks, there is still much debate on when this process happens. In a few cases protoplanets have been directly imaged, but for the vast majority of systems, disk gaps and…
At early times the Universe was filled up with an extremely dense and hot gas. Due to the expansion it cooled below the binding energies of atoms which led to the formation of the first nuclei. In the physical environment of the…
Protoplanetary disks naturally emerge during protostellar core-collapse. In their early evolutionary stages, infalling material dominates their dynamical evolution. In the context of planet formation, this means that the conditions in young…