Related papers: Consolidating and Crushing Exoplanets: Did it happ…
Since the discovery of Kepler-10, the system has received considerable interest because it contains a small, rocky planet which orbits the star in less than a day. The system's parameters, announced by the Kepler team and subsequently used…
The thick disc contains stars formed within the first Gyr of Galactic history, and little is known about their planetary systems. The Spitzer MIPS instrument was used to search 11 of the closest of these old low-metal stars for…
We study the orbital architecture, physical characteristics of planets, formation and long-term evolution of the Kepler-30 planetary system, detected and announced in 2012 by the KEPLER team. We show that the Kepler-30 system belongs to a…
At least 30\% of main sequence stars host planets with sizes of between 1 and 4 Earth radii and orbital periods of less than 100 days. We use N-body simulations including a model for gas-assisted pebble accretion and disk--planet tidal…
One of the most directly observable features of a transiting multi-planet system is their size-ordering when ranked in orbital separation. Kepler has revealed a rich diversity of outcomes, from perfectly ordered systems, like Kepler-80, to…
In this short communication I compare recent findings suggesting a low binary star fraction for late type stars with knowledge concerning the forms of the stellar initial and present day mass functions for masses down to the hydrogen…
Debates regarding the age and inclination of the planetary system orbiting HR 8799, and the release of additional astrometric data following the discovery of the fourth planet prompted us to examine the possibility of constraining these two…
The compact multi-transiting systems discovered by Kepler challenge traditional planet formation theories. These fall into two broad classes: (1) formation further out followed by migration; (2) formation in situ from a disk of gas and…
We present a series of calculations aimed at examining how an inner system of planetesimals/protoplanets, undergoing terrestrial planet formation, evolves under the influence of a giant planet undergoing inward type II migration through the…
We address three questions regarding solar system planets. What determined their number? Why are their orbits nearly circular and coplanar? How long did they take to form? Runaway accretion in a disk of small bodies resulted in a tiny…
Extrasolar planets and belts of debris orbiting post-main-sequence single stars may become unbound as the evolving star loses mass. In multiple star systems, the presence or co-evolution of the additional stars can significantly complicate…
In the past two decades, transit surveys have revealed a class of planets with thick atmospheres -- sub-Neptunes -- that must have completed their accretion in protoplanet disks. When planets form in the gaseous disk, the gravitational…
The study of cosmology, galaxy formation and exoplanets has now advanced to a stage where a cosmic inventory of terrestrial planets may be attempted. By coupling semi-analytic models of galaxy formation to a recipe that relates the…
We present a statistical analysis that demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Kepler candidate multiple transiting systems (multis) indeed represent true, physically-associated transiting planets. Binary stars provide the primary…
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered thousands of planetary systems, ~20% of which are found to host multiple transiting planets. This relative paucity (compared to the high fraction of single transiting systems) is postulated to result…
Motivated by the large number of compact extrasolar planetary systems discovered by the Kepler Mission, this paper considers perturbations due to possible additional outer planets. The discovered compact systems sometimes contain multiple…
The presence of planets around solar-type stars suggests that many white dwarfs should have relic planetary systems. While planets closer than $\sim$ 5~AU will most likely not survive the post-main sequence lifetime of its parent star, any…
Recent work has suggested that many planetary systems lie near instability. If all systems are near instability, an additional planet must exist in stable regions of well-separated extra-solar planetary systems to push these systems to the…
In the last few years, a number of planets have been proposed to orbit several post main-sequence binary star systems on the basis of observed variations in the timing of eclipses between the binary components. A common feature of these…
We present the discovery of debris systems around three solar mass stars based upon observations performed with the Spitzer Space Telescope as part of a Legacy Science Program, ``the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems'' (FEPS). We…