Related papers: Tidal Downsizing Model. III. Planets from sub-Eart…
Discovery of only handful of exoplanets required to establish a correlation between giant planet occurrence and metallicity of their host stars. More than 20 years have already passed from that discovery, however, many questions are still…
Recent observational results show that very low mass stars and brown dwarfs are able to host close-in rocky planets. Low-mass stars are the most abundant stars in the Galaxy and the formation efficiency of their planetary systems is…
State-of-the-art planet formation models are now capable of accounting for the full spectrum of known planet types. This comes at the cost of increasing complexity of the models, which calls into question whether established links between…
The detection of Earth-size exoplanets around low-mass stars -- in stars such as Proxima Centauri and TRAPPIST-1 -- provide an exceptional chance to improve our understanding of the formation of planets around M stars and brown dwarfs. We…
Tidal dissipation in planetary interiors is one of the key physical mechanisms that drive the evolution of star-planet and planet-moon systems. Tidal dissipation in planets is intrinsically related to their internal structure. In…
The large number of observed exoplanets ($\gtrsim $ 700) provides important constraints on their origin as deduced from the mass-period diagram of planets. The most surprising features in the diagram are 1) the (apparent) pile up of gas…
Giant planets and brown dwarfs are thought to form via a combination of pathways, including bottom-up mechanisms in which gas is accreted onto a solid core and top-down mechanisms in which gas collapses directly into a gravitationally-bound…
Gas-giant planets are thought to require conditions beyond the water snow line to build solid cores efficiently. In close binary star systems, the companion's gravity additionally limits the region of stable orbits, potentially excluding…
We explore the origin of the trend of heavy elements in observed massive exoplanets. Coupling of better measurements of mass ($M_p$) and radius of exoplanets with planet structure models enables estimating the total heavy element mass…
While the Solar System contains no planets between the sizes of Uranus and Saturn, our current exoplanet census includes several dozen such planets with well-measured masses and radii. These sub-Saturns exhibit a diversity of bulk…
Stars orbiting supermassive black holes can generate recurring accretion flares in repeating partial tidal disruption events (TDEs). Here we develop an efficient formalism for analyzing the time-dependent response of a star to the removal…
Observations in the past decade have revealed extrasolar planets with a wide range of orbital semimajor axes and eccentricities. Based on the present understanding of planet formation via core accretion and oligarchic growth, we expect that…
Tidal dissipation in planetary interiors is one of the key physical mechanisms that drive the evolution of star-planet and planet-moon systems. New constraints are now obtained both in the Solar and exoplanetary systems. Tidal dissipation…
Core accretion is the standard scenario of planet formation, wherein planets are formed by sequential accretion of gas and solids, and is widely used to interpret exoplanet observations. However, no direct probes of the scenario have been…
The composition of rocky exoplanets in the context of stars' composition provides important constraints to formation theories. In this study, we select a sample of exoplanets with mass and radius measurements with an uncertainty <25% and…
The radius distribution of small, close-in exoplanets has recently been shown to be bimodal. The photoevaporation model predicted this bimodality. In the photoevaporation scenario, some planets are completely stripped of their primordial…
It has long been known that stars with high metallicity are more likely to host giant planets than stars with low metallicity. Yet the connection between host star metallicity and the properties of small planets is only just beginning to be…
Sub-Saturns straddle the boundary between gas-rich Jupiters and gas-poor super-Earths/sub-Neptunes. Their large radii (4--8$R_\oplus$) suggest that their gas-to-core mass ratios range $\sim$0.1--1.0. With their envelopes as massive as their…
Planets with sizes between those of Earth and Neptune divide into two populations: purely rocky bodies whose atmospheres contribute negligibly to their sizes, and larger gas-enveloped planets possessing voluminous and optically thick…
The newfound ability to detect SO2 in exoplanet atmospheres presents an opportunity to measure sulfur abundances and so directly test between competing modes of planet formation. In contrast to carbon and oxygen, whose dominant molecules…