Related papers: Gravitational scattering by giant planets

Seismology applied to giant planets could drastically change our understanding of their deep interiors, as it has happened with the Earth, the Sun, and many main-sequence and evolved stars. The study of giant planets' composition is…

We determine the orbital eccentricities of individual small Kepler planets, through a combination of asteroseismology and transit light-curve analysis. We are able to constrain the eccentricities of 51 systems with a single transiting…

Giant planets are expected to form at orbital radii that are relatively large compared to transit and radial velocity detections (>1 AU). As a result, giant planet formation is best observed through direct imaging. By simulating the…

The origin of close-in giant planets is a key open question in planet formation theory. The two leading models are (i) formation at the outer disk followed by migration and (ii) in situ formation. In this work we determine the atmospheric…

Observations point to a correlation between outer giants and inner sub-Neptunes, unexplained by simulations so far. We utilize N-body simulations including pebble and gas accretion as well as planetary migration to investigate how the gas…

Although the long-term numerical integrations of planetary orbits indicate that our planetary system is dynamically stable at least +/- Gyr, the dynamics of our Solar System includes both chaotic and stable motions: the large planets…

The Kepler transit survey with follow-up spectroscopic observations has discovered numerous super-Earth sized planets and revealed intriguing features of their sizes, orbital periods, and their relations between adjacent planets. For the…

We present statistical results from the Epoch of Giant Planet Migration RV planet search program. This survey was designed to measure the occurrence rate of giant planets interior to the water ice line of young Sun-like stars, compare this…

The Kepler mission reveals a peculiar trough-peak feature in the orbital spacing of close-in planets near mean-motion resonances: a deficit and an excess that are a couple percent to the narrow, respectively wide, of the resonances. This…

In a recent paper we proposed that the giant planets' primordial orbits may have been eccentric (~0.05), and used a suite of dynamical simulations to show outcomes of the giant planet instability that are consistent with their present-day…

Young stars are mostly found in dense stellar environments, and even our own Solar system may have formed in a star cluster. Here, we numerically explore the evolution of planetary systems similar to our own Solar system in star clusters.…

The number of exoplanets detected using gravitational microlensing technique is currently larger than 200, which enables population studies. Microlensing is uniquely sensitive to low-mass planets orbiting at separations of several…

The late-stage formation of giant planetary systems is rich in interesting dynamical mechanisms. Previous simulations of three giant planets initially on quasi-circular and quasi-coplanar orbits in the gas disc have shown that highly…

Batygin and Brown (2016) have suggested the existence of a new Solar System planet supposed to be responsible for the perturbation of eccentric orbits of small outer bodies. The main challenge is now to detect and characterize this putative…

Many warm Jupiters (WJs) have substantial eccentricities, which are linked to their formation and migration histories. This paper explores eccentricity excitation of WJs due to planet-planet scattering, beginning with 3-4 planets in…

More than 450 exoplanets have currently been detected, most of them by the radial velocity (RV) technique. While the majority of exoplanets have been found around main-sequence (MS) FGK stars (M 1.5M*), only a small fraction (- 10%) have…

We explore atmospheric escape from close-in exoplanets with the highest mass loss rates. First, we locate the transition from stellar X-ray and UV-driven escape to rapid Roche lobe overflow, which occurs once the 10-100 nbar pressure level…

To date, two planetary systems have been discovered with close-in, terrestrial-mass planets (< 5-10 Earth masses). Many more such discoveries are anticipated in the coming years with radial velocity and transit searches. Here we investigate…

The transit method, during which a planet's presence is inferred by measuring the reduction in flux as it passes in front of its parent star, is a highly successful exoplanet detection and characterization technique. During transit, the…

We present here the first observationally based determination of the rate of occurrence of circumbinary planets. This is derived from the publicly available Kepler data, using an automated search algorithm and debiasing process to produce…