Related papers: Jupiter's Decisive Role in the Inner Solar System'…
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…
From the numerous detected planets outside the Solar system, no terrestrial planet comparable to our Earth has been discovered so far. The search for an Exo-Earth is certainly a big challenge which may require the detections of planetary…
We study the possibility that the mutual interactions between Jupiter and Saturn prevented Type II migration from driving these planets much closer to the Sun. Our work extends previous results by Masset and Snellgrove (2001), by exploring…
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 discovery of high incidence of hot Jupiters in dense clusters challenges the field-based hot Jupiter formation theory. In dense clusters, interactions between planetary systems and flyby stars are relatively common. This has a…
The discovery of now about 20 extrasolar planets orbiting solar-type stars with properties quite different from those in our Solar System has raised many questions about the formation and evolution of planets. The tidal interaction between…
The Sun was an order of magnitude more luminous during the first few hundred thousand years of its existence, due in part to the gravitational energy released by material accreting from the Solar nebula. If Jupiter was already near its…
The primordial structure of Jupiter remains uncertain, yet it holds vital clues on the planet's formation and early evolution. Recent work used dynamical constraints from Jupiter's inner moons to determine its primordial state, thereby…
The formation history of giant planets determines their primordial structure and consequent evolution. We simulate various formation paths of Jupiter to determine its primordial entropy, and find that a common outcome is for proto-Jupiter…
When Jupiter's Roche Lobe radius exceeded the scale height of the protoplanetary disk, Jupiter opened a gap in the disk. When the gap was wide enough, tidal torques from the disk interior and exterior to Jupiter were suppressed and…
Hot Jupiters are giant planets on orbits a few hundredths of an AU. They do not share their system with low-mass close-in planets, despite these latter being exceedingly common. Two migration channels for hot Jupiters have been proposed:…
The Solar System hosts the most studied and best understood major and minor planetary bodies - and the only extraterrestrial bodies to have been visited by spacecraft. The Solar System therefore provides important constraints on both the…
Exoplanets show a pile-up of Jupiter-size planets in orbits with a 3-day period. A fraction of these hot Jupiters have retrograde orbits with respect to the parent star's rotation. To explain these observations we performed a series of…
We investigate the possibility that the Moon's formation impact was triggered by an early dynamical instability of the giant planets. We consider the well-studied "jumping Jupiter" hypothesis for the solar system's instability, where…
We have investigated Saturn's core formation at a radial pressure maximum in a protoplanetary disk, which is created by gap opening by Jupiter. A core formed via planetesimal accretion induces the fragmentation of surrounding planetesimals,…
Recent discoveries of extrasolar planets at small orbital radii, or with significant eccentricities, indicate that interactions between massive planets and the disks of gas and dust from which they formed are vital for determining the final…
We report the conditional occurrences between three planetary types: super-Earths (m sin i $<$ 10 M$_\oplus$, P $<$ 100 days), warm Jupiters (m sin i $>$ 95 $M_\oplus$, 10 $<$ P $<$ 100 days), and cold Jupiters (m sin i $>$ 95 M$_\oplus$, P…
The presence of ``Hot Jupiters'', Jovian mass planets with very short orbital periods orbiting nearby main sequence stars, has been proposed to be primarily due to the orbital migration of planets formed in orbits initially much further…
In the coming years, it is likely that the first potentially Earth-like planets will be discovered orbiting other stars. Once found, the characterisation of those planets will play a vital role in determining which will be chosen as the…
The region around the H$_2$O ice line, due to its higher surface density, seems to be the ideal location to form planets. The core of Jupiter, as well as the cores of close in gas giants are thus thought to form in this region of the disk.…