Related papers: The statistical mechanics of planet orbits
In the last years several exoplanets have been discovered that orbit one component of a compact binary system (separation < 50 astronomical units), the probably best-known case is gamma-Cephei. So far, all attempts to explain the in-situ…
Planetary systems with sufficiently small orbital spacings can experience planetary mergers and ejections. The branching ratio of mergers vs ejections depends sensitively on the treatment of planetary close encounters. Previous works have…
Hydrodynamical simulations of two giant planets embedded in a gaseous disk have shown that in case of a smooth convergent migration they end up trapped into a mean motion resonance. These findings have led to the conviction that the onset…
The initial conditions, physics, and outcome of planet formation are now constrained by detailed observations of protoplanetary disks, laboratory experiments, and the discovery of thousands of extrasolar planetary systems. These…
Terrestrial planets form in a series of dynamical steps from the solid component of circumstellar disks. First, km-sized planetesimals form likely via a combination of sticky collisions, turbulent concentration of solids, and gravitational…
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…
We study the orbital architecture of multi-planet systems detected by the Kepler transit mission using N-body simulations, focusing on the orbital spacing between adjacent planets in systems showing four or more transiting planets. We find…
We determine the orbital eccentricities of individual small Kepler planets, through a combination of asteroseismology and transit light-curve analysis. We are able to constrain the eccentricities of 51 systems with a single transiting…
The observed population of Hot Jupiters displays a stunning variety of physical properties, including a wide range of densities and core sizes for a given planetary mass. Motivated by the observational sample, this paper studies the…
We show that interaction with a gas disk may produce young planetary systems with closely-spaced orbits, stabilized by mean-motion resonances between neighbors. On longer timescales, after the gas is gone, interaction with a remnant…
We use the model for the migration of planets introduced in Del Popolo, Yesilyurt & Ercan (2003) to calculate the observed mass and semimajor axis distribution of extra-solar planets. The assumption that the surface density in planetesimals…
We explore the evolution of a giant planet that interacts with a circumbinary disc that orbits a misaligned binary by means of analytic models and hydrodynamical simulations. Planet-disc interactions lead to mutual tilt oscillations between…
The high-multiplicity exoplanet systems are generally more tightly packed when compared to the solar system. Such compact multi-planet systems are often susceptible to dynamical instability. We investigate the impact of dynamical…
As of today ten circumbinary planets orbiting solar type main sequence stars have been discovered. Nearly all of them orbit around the central binary very closely to the region of instability where it is difficult to form them in situ. It…
The discovery of planets in close orbits around binary stars raises questions about their formation. It is believed that these planets formed in the outer regions of the disc and then migrated through planet-disc interaction to their…
A major outstanding question regarding the formation of planetary systems is whether wide-orbit giant planets form differently than close-in giant planets. We aim to establish constraints on two key parameters that are relevant for…
The terrestrial planets are believed to have formed by violent collisions of tens of lunar- to Mars-size protoplanets at time t<200 Myr after the protoplanetary gas disk dispersal (t_0). The solar system giant planets rapidly formed during…
We study the orbital properties of stars in four (published) simulations of thick disks formed by: i) accretion from disrupted satellites, ii) heating of a pre-existing thin disk by a minor merger, iii) radial migration and iv) gas rich…
At present the possible existence of planets around the stars of a close binary system is still matter of debate. Can planetary bodies form in spite of the strong gravitational perturbations of the companion star? We study in this paper via…
One of the most challenging problems we face in our understanding of planet formation is how Jupiter and Saturn could have formed before the the solar nebula dispersed. The most popular model of giant planet formation is the so-called 'core…