Related papers: Testing In Situ Assembly with the Kepler Planet Ca…
A successful solar system model must reproduce the four terrestrial planets. Here, we focus on 1) the likelihood of forming Mercury and the four terrestrial planets in the same system (a 4-P system); 2) the orbital properties and masses of…
Exoplanetary systems hosting multiple low-mass planets are thought to have experienced dynamical instability, during which planet-planet collisions and mergers occur; these collisions can impart substantial amount of angular momentum to the…
The core-accretion and disk instability models have so far been used to explain planetary formation. These models have different conditions, such as planet mass, disk mass, and metallicity for formation of gas giants. The core-accretion…
We present preliminary results from our spectroscopic search for planets within 1 AU of metal-poor field dwarfs using NASA time with HIRES on Keck I. The core accretion model of gas giant planet formation is sensitive to the metallicity of…
We have established precise planet radii, semimajor axes, incident stellar fluxes, and stellar masses for 909 planets in 355 multi-planet systems discovered by Kepler. In this sample, we find that planets within a single multi-planet system…
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…
The recent Kepler discovery of KOI-152 reveals a system of three hot super-Earth candidates that are in or near a 4:2:1 mean motion resonance. It is unlikely that they formed in situ, the planets probably underwent orbital migration during…
We examine the effect of secular perturbations by giant planets on systems of multiple, lower mass planets orbiting Sun-like stars. We simulate the effects of forcing both eccentricity and inclination, separately and together. We compare…
The final stage in the formation of terrestrial planets consists of the accumulation of ~1000-km ``planetary embryos'' and a swarm of billions of 1-10 km ``planetesimals.'' During this process, water-rich material is accreted by the…
Important clues on the formation and evolution of planetary systems can be inferred from the stellar obliquity $\psi$. We study the distribution of obliquities using the California-Kepler Survey and the TEPCat Catalog of…
The distribution of small planet radius ($<$4 R$_\oplus$) is an indicator of the underlying processes governing planet formation and evolution. We investigate the correlation between the radius distribution of exoplanets in \textit{Kepler}…
It has been long proposed that, if all the terrestrial planets form within a tiny ring of solid material at around 1 AU, the concentrated mass-distance distribution of the current system can be reproduced. Recent planetesimal formation…
Planet formation encompasses processes that span a remarkable 40 magnitudes in mass, ranging from collisions between micron-sized grains inherited from the ISM to the accretion of gas by giant planets. The planet formation process takes…
Exoplanetary systems that contain multiple planets on short-period orbits appear to be prevalent in the current observed exoplanetary population, yet the processes that give rise to such configurations remain poorly understood. A common…
We develop a simple model of planetary formation, focusing our attention on those planets with masses less than 10 Earth masses and studying particularly the primordial spin parameters of planets resulting from the accretion of…
Understanding the stability of exoplanet systems is crucial for constraining planetary formation and evolution theories. We use the machine-learning stability indicator, SPOCK, to characterize the stability of 126 high-multiplicity systems…
Solar system planets move on almost circular orbits. In strong contrast, many massive gas giant exoplanets travel on highly elliptical orbits, whereas the shape of the orbits of smaller, more terrestrial, exoplanets remained largely…
We present formation simulations of the six Kepler 11 planets. Models assume either in situ or ex situ assembly, the latter with migration, and are evolved to the estimated age of the system, 8 Gyr. Models combine detailed calculations of…
The search for satellites around exoplanets represents one of the greatest challenges in advancing the characterization of planetary systems. Currently, we can only detect massive satellites, which resemble additional planetary companions…
Studying the orbital stability of multi-planet systems is essential to understand planet formation, estimate the stable time of an observed planetary system, and advance population synthesis models. Although previous studies have primarily…