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Planets are thought to form via accretion from a remnant disk of gas and solids around a newly formed star. During this process material in the disk either remains bound to the star as part of either a planet, a smaller celestial body, or…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2017-06-14 Thomas Barclay , Elisa V. Quintana , Sean N. Raymond , Matthew T. Penny

As of August 2019, among the more than 4000 confirmed exoplanets, only one has been detected in a globular cluster (GC) M4. The scarce of exoplanet detections motivates us to employ direct $N$-body simulations to investigate the dynamical…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2019-09-11 Maxwell Xu Cai , S. Portegies Zwart , M. B. N. Kouwenhoven , Rainer Spurzem

We present the first prediction for the mass distribution function of Galactic free-floating planets (FFPs) that aims to accurately include the relative contributions of multiple formation pathways and stellar populations. We derive our…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-01-23 Gavin A. L. Coleman , William DeRocco

Stars do not form in isolation but together with other stars, and often in a clustered environment. Depending on the initial conditions in these environments, such as initial density and substructure, the distances of encounters between…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2024-08-01 Christina Schoettler , James E. Owen

The majority of stars form in star clusters and many are thought to have planetary companions. We demonstrate that multi-planet systems are prone to instabilities as a result of frequent stellar encounters in these star clusters much more…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-15 W. Hao , M. B. N. Kouwenhoven , R. Spurzem

Planetary systems formed in clusters may be subject to stellar encounter flybys. Here we create a diverse range of representative planetary systems with different orbital scales and planets' masses and examine encounters between them in a…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2020-06-17 Daohai Li , Alexander J. Mustill , Melvyn B. Davies

We find that free-floating planets can remain bound to a star cluster for much longer than was previously assumed: of the order of the cluster half-mass relaxation timescale as opposed to the crossing-time. This result is based on N-body…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-24 Jarrod R. Hurley , Michael M. Shara

Continuous habitability of a planet is a critical condition for advanced forms of life to appear, but it can be endangered by astronomical events such as stellar encounters. The purpose of this study is to analyze close stellar encounters…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2021-04-21 Behzad Bojnordi-Arbab , Sohrab Rahvar

Thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets have been identified in recent years. Consequently, theoretical research on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems has seen a boost, and the processes of planet-planet…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2016-09-06 M. B. N. Kouwenhoven , Qi Shu , Maxwell Xu Cai , Rainer Spurzem

Microlensing observations suggest that the mass distribution of free-floating planets (FFPs) follows a declining power-law with increasing mass. The origin of such distribution is unclear. Using a population synthesis framework, we…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-11-06 Kangrou Guo , Shigeru Ida , Masahiro Ogihara

Most stars form in embedded clusters. Stellar flybys may affect the orbital architecture of the systems by exciting the eccentricity and causing dynamical instability. Since, incidentally, the timescale over which a cluster loses its…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-12 Francesco Marzari , Giovanni Picogna

We numerically studied close encounters between a young stellar system hosting a massive, gravitationally fragmenting disk and an intruder diskless star with the purpose to determine the evolution of fragments that have formed in the disk…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2018-01-10 Eduard I. Vorobyov , Maria Steinrueck , Vardan Elbakyan , Manuel Guedel

The discovery of Exoplanetary Systems has challenged some of the theories of planet formation, which assume unperturbed evolution of the host star and its planets. However, in star clusters the interactions with flyby stars and binaries may…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2020-06-17 Yi-Han Wang , Rosalba Perna , Nathan W. C. Leigh

Multiple studies have shown that planet-planet scattering plays an important role in the dynamical evolution of planetary systems. For instance, it has been shown that planet-planet scattering can reproduce the eccentricity distribution of…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-01-24 Hareesh Gautham Bhaskar , Hagai Perets

A large fraction of stars are formed in dense clusters. In the cluster, close encounters between stars at distances less than 100 au are common. It has been shown that during close encounters planets can transfer between stars. Such…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2022-01-12 Giorgi Kokaia , Melvyn B. Davies , Alexander J. Mustill

We perform a simulation using the Astrophysical Multipurpose Software Environment of the Orion Trapezium star cluster in which the evolution of the stars and the dynamics of planetary systems are taken into account. The initial conditions…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2019-04-24 Arjen van Elteren , Simon Portegies Zwart , Inti Pelupessy , Maxwell Cai , Steve McMillan

Over the past 25 years, observations have uncovered a large population of free-floating planets (FFPs), whose origins remain debated. Massive FFPs (several Jupiter masses or more) may form via gravitational collapse of molecular clouds,…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-11-21 Aleksandra Ćalović , Sergei Nayakshin , Sarah Casewell , Núria Miret-Roig

Strong encounters between single stars and binaries play a pivotal role in the evolution of star clusters. Such encounters can also dramatically modify the orbital parameters of binaries, exchange partners in and out of binaries, and are a…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-08-06 Aaron M. Geller , Nathan W. C. Leigh

We specify the range to which perturbations penetrate a planetesimal system. Such perturbations can originate from massive planets or from encounters with other stars. The latter can have an origin in the star cluster in which the planetary…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-08-06 Simon Portegies Zwart , Lucie Jilkova

The majority of discovered exoplanets have been observed orbiting field stars as opposed to within a star cluster. To determine whether the lack of observed exoplanets in star clusters is due to gravitational perturbations or observational…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-05-08 Jeremy J. Webb , Milica Ivetic , Maxwell X. Cai , Simon Portegies Zwart , Daniella Morrone