Related papers: The Science Case for the Planet Formation Imager (…
Two basic routes for planetesimal formation have been proposed over the last few decades. One is a classical "slow-growth" scenario. Another one is particle concentration models, in which small pebbles are concentrated locally and then…
Recent direct imaging discoveries suggest a new class of massive, distant planets around A stars. These widely separated giants have been interpreted as signs of planet formation driven by gravitational instability, but the viability of…
The Sun and >15 percent of nearby stars are surrounded by dusty debris disks that must be collisionally replenished by asteroids and comets, as the dust would otherwise be depleted on <10 Myr timescales (ref. 1). Theoretical studies show…
The far-infrared (FIR) regime is one of the few wavelength ranges where no astronomical data with sub-arcsecond spatial resolution exist. Neither of the medium-term satellite projects like SPICA, Millimetron nor O.S.T. will resolve this…
Close binary systems present challenges to planet formation. As binary separations decrease, so too do the occurrence rates of protoplanetary disks in young systems and planets in mature systems. For systems that do retain disks, their disk…
Context. Planets are thought to form inside weakly ionized regions of protoplanetary disks, where turbulence creates ideal conditions for solid growth. However, the nature of this turbulence is still uncertain. In this zone, vertical shear…
Planets are born from the gas and dust discs surrounding young stars. Energetic radiation from the central star can drive thermal outflows from the discs atmospheres, strongly affecting the evolution of the discs and the nascent planetary…
We consider current state of star formation theory and requirements to observations in millimeter and submillimeter ranges which are necessary for resolution of the most actual problems of the physics of star formation. Two key features of…
Spiral arms have been observed in nearly a dozen protoplanetary discs in near-infrared scattered light and recently also in the sub-millimetre continuum. While one of the most compelling explanations is that they are driven by planetary or…
To avoid known difficulties in planetesimal formation such as the drift or fragmentation barriers, many scenarios have been proposed. However, in these scenarios, planetesimals form in general only at some specific locations in…
One of the current challenges of planet formation theory is to explain the enrichment of observed exoplanetary atmospheres. Past studies have focused on scenarios where either pebbles or planetesimals were the heavy element enrichment's…
We present a new set of multi-million particle SPH simulations of the formation of disk dominated galaxies in a cosmological context. Some of these galaxies are higher resolution versions of the models already described in Governato et al…
The dispersal of the circumstellar discs of dust and gas surrounding young low- mass stars has important implications for the formation of planetary systems. Photo- evaporation from energetic radiation from the central object is thought to…
New ALMA observations of protoplanetary disks allow us to probe planet formation in other systems, giving us new constraints on planet formation processes. Meanwhile, studies of our own Solar System rely on constraints derived in a…
Debris disks are the dust disks found around ~20% of nearby main sequence stars in far-IR surveys. They can be considered as descendants of protoplanetary disks or components of planetary systems, providing valuable information on…
We propose to the community a comprehensive UV/optical/NIR imaging survey of Galactic star formation regions to probe all aspects of the star formation process. The primary goal of such a study is to understand the evolution of…
Dozens of planets and brown dwarfs are known to orbit one component of tight stellar binaries ($a_{\rm bin} \lesssim 20$ au), despite circumstellar discs in such systems being truncated to radii of only $\sim (0.2-5)$ au. This presents a…
Giant planets are expected to form within circumstellar disks, which shape their formation history and the local environment. Here, we consider the formation and structure of circumplanetary disks that arise during the late stages of giant…
The consistency of planet formation models suffers from the disconnection between the regime of small and large bodies. This is primarily caused by so-called growth barriers: the direct growth of larger bodies is halted at centimetre-sized…
Structures in circumstellar disks such as gaps and rings are often attributed to planets. This connection has been difficult to show unequivocally, as other processes may also produce these features. Particularly, a photoelectric…