Related papers: The Science Case for the Planet Formation Imager (…
The NASA Kepler mission has revealed an abundant class of Systems with Tightly-packed Inner Planets (STIPs). The current paradigm for planet formation suggests that small planetesimals will quickly spiral into the host star due to…
Planets form and obtain their compositions in disks of gas and dust around young stars. The chemical compositions of these planet-forming disks regulate all aspects of planetary compositions from bulk elemental inventories to access to…
Planet formation remains a fundamentally important yet poorly understood process. Protoplanetary disks, the birthplaces of planetary systems, exhibit a wide range of substructures that are increasingly interpreted as signatures of…
Circumstellar disks are an integral part of the star formation process and the sites where planets are formed. Understanding the physical processes that drive their evolution, as disks evolve from optically thick to optically thin, is…
In models of planetary accretion, pebbles form by dust coagulation and rapidly migrate toward the central star. Planetesimals may continuously form from pebbles over the age of the protoplanetary disk by yet uncertain mechanisms. Meanwhile,…
The major questions relevant to star and planet formation are: What controls the rate, efficiency, spatial clustering, multiplicity, and initial mass function of star formation, now and in the past? What are the major feedback mechanisms…
Planet formation is a hugely dynamic process requiring the transport, concentration and assimilation of gas and dust to form the first planetesimals and cores. With access to extremely high spatial and spectral resolution observations at…
Our understanding of the process of terrestrial planet formation has grown markedly over the past 20 years, yet key questions remain. This review begins by first addressing the critical, earliest stage of dust coagulation and concentration.…
The imaging of disks around young stars presents extreme challenges in high dynamic range, angular resolution, and sensitivity. Recent instrumental advances have met these challenges admirably, leading to a marked increase in imaging…
Recent ALMA observations on disk substructures suggest the presence of embedded protoplanets in a large number disks. The primordial configurations of these planetary systems can be deduced from the morphology of the disk substructure and…
The formation mechanism of planetesimals in protoplanetary discs is hotly debated. Currently, the favoured model involves the accumulation of meter-sized objects within a turbulent disc, followed by a phase of gravitational instability. At…
[Abridged] Aims: We provide predictions for ALMA observations of planet gaps that account for the specific spatial distribution of dust that results from consistent gas+dust dynamics. Methods: In a previous work, we ran full 3D, two-fluid…
Context: While sub-micron- and micron-sized dust grains are generally well mixed with the gas phase in protoplanetary disks, larger grains will be partially decoupled and as a consequence have a different distribution from that of the gas.…
We present the statistical analysis of a subsample of 45 young stars surrounded by protoplanetary disks (PPDs). This is the largest imaging survey uniquely focused on PPDs to date. Our goal is to search for young forming companions embedded…
As of today over 40 planetary systems have been discovered in binary star systems. In all cases the configuration appears to be circumstellar, where the planets orbit around one of the stars, the secondary acting as a perturber. The…
Discs of gas and dust around Myr-old stars are a by-product of the star formation process and provide the raw material to form planets. Hence, their evolution and dispersal directly impact what type of planets can form and affect the final…
We model the assembly of planets from planetary embryos under the conditions suggested by various scenarios for the formation of the planetary system around the millisecond pulsar B1257+12. We find that the most likely models fall at the…
A detailed understanding of the physics of star and planet formation requires study of individual objects as well as statistical assessment of global properties and evolutionary trends. Observational investigations of circumstellar material…
Gravitational fragmentation has been proposed as a mechanism for the formation of giant planets in close orbits around solar-type stars. However, it is debatable whether this mechanism can function in the inner regions (R<40 AU) of real…
Interferometric observations of protoplanetary disks by VLTI and ALMA have greatly improved our understanding of the detailed structure of these planetary birthplaces. These observations have revealed a variety of large-scale disk…