Related papers: The Science Case for the Planet Formation Imager (…
Circumstellar disks have long been regarded as windows into planetary systems. The advent of high sensitivity, high resolution imaging in the submillimetre where both the solid and gas components of disks can be detected opens up new…
Planets are supposed to form in circumstellar disks. The gravitational potential of a planet perturbs the disk and leads to characteristic structures, i.e. spiral waves and gaps, in the disk's density profile. We perform a large-scale…
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…
While a large fraction of the stars are in multiple systems, our understanding of the processes leading to the formation of these systems is still inadequate. Given the large theoretical uncertainties, observation plays a basic role. Here…
The initial conditions, physics, and outcome of planet formation are now constrained by detailed observations of protoplanetary disks, laboratory experiments, and the discovery of thousands of extrasolar planetary systems. These…
In the incremental growth model, planetesimal formation constitutes the least understood step in the process of planetary formation. The two main difficulties in this regard are the collision/fragmentation and the drift barriers. Numerous…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
As the panel on Planetary Systems and Star Formation (PSF) is fully aware, the next decade will see major advances in our understanding of these areas of research. To quote from their charge, these advances will occur in studies of solar…
The formation of circumplanetary disks is central to our understanding of giant planet formation, influencing their growth rate during the post-runaway phase and observability while embedded in protoplanetary disks. We use 3D global…
We present the first results from simulations of processes leading to planet formation in protoplanetary disks with different metallicities. For a given metallicity, we construct a two-dimensional grid of disk models with different initial…
Planet formation studies are often focused on solar-type stars, implicitly considering our Sun as reference point. This approach overlooks, however, that Herbig Ae/Be stars are in some sense much better targets to study planet formation…
Understanding planetesimal formation is an essential first step to understanding planet formation. The distribution of these first solid bodies will drive the locations where planetary embryos can grow. We seek to understand the parameter…
The Wide Field Imager (WFI) is one of two instruments for the Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics (Athena). In this paper we summarise three of the many key science objectives for the WFI - the formation and growth of…
While it is generally accepted that the magnetic field and its non-ideal effects play important roles during the stellar formation, simple models of pure hydrodynamics and angular momentum conservation are still widely employed in the…
High contrast imaging instruments such as GPI and SPHERE are discovering gap structures in protoplanetary disks at an ever faster pace. Some of these gaps may be opened by planets forming in the disks. In order to constrain planet formation…
The formation of planetesimals from cm-sized pebbles in protoplanetary disks faces significant barriers, including fragmentation and radial drift. We identify a previously unaccounted screening force, arising from mutual shielding of…
The formation and evolution of protoplanetary discs remains a challenge from both a theoretical and numerical standpoint. In this work we first perform a series of tests of our new hybrid algorithm presented in Glaschke, Amaro-Seoane and…
Star and planet formation are inextricably linked. In the earliest phases of the collapse of a protostar a disc forms around the young star and such discs are observed for the first several million years of a star's life. It is within these…
Protoplanetary disks are thought to be the birth places of planetary systems. The formation and the subsequent evolution of protoplanetary disks are regulated by the star formation process, which begins with the collapse of a cloud core to…
Circumplanetary discs (CPDs) form around young gas giants and are thought to be the sites of moon formation as well as an intermediate reservoir of gas that feeds the growth of the gas giant. How the physical properties of such CPDs are…