Related papers: A Metallicity Recipe for Rocky Planets
Super-Earths are found in tighter orbits than the Earth's around more than one third of main sequence stars. It has been proposed that super-Earths are scaled-up terrestrial planets that formed similarly, through mutual accretion of…
We investigate the chemical composition of the solar system's giant planets atmospheres using a physical formation model with chemistry. The model incorporate disk evolution, pebbles and gas accretion, type I and II migration, simplified…
We explore the heating and differentiation of rocky planets that grow by rapid pebble accretion. Our terrestrial planets grow outside of the ice line and initially accrete 28\% water ice by mass. The accretion of water stops after the…
The chemical composition of stars that have orbiting planets provides important clues about the frequency, architecture, and composition of exoplanet systems. We explore the possibility that stars from different galactic populations that…
Firstly, we study the final masses of giant planets growing in protoplanetary disks through capture of disk gas, by employing an empirical formula for the gas capture rate and a shallow disk gap model, which are both based on hydrodynamical…
The standard picture of planet formation posits that giant gas planets are over-grown rocky planets massive enough to attract enormous gas atmospheres. It has been shown recently that the opposite point of view is physically plausible: the…
Context: Pebble accretion is expected to be the dominant process for the formation of massive solid planets, such as the cores of giant planets and super-Earths. So, far, this process has been studied under the assumption that dust…
(Abridged) The chemical composition of planetary atmospheres has long been thought to store information regarding where and when a planet accretes its material. Predicting this chemical composition theoretically is a crucial step in linking…
Stellar populations and their distribution differ widely across the Galaxy, which is likely to affect planet demographics. Our local neighbourhood is dominated by young, metal-rich stars in the galactic thin disc, while the stellar halo and…
The majority of discovered exoplanetary systems harbour a new class of planets, bodies typically several times more massive than Earth but orbiting their host stars well inside the orbit of Mercury. The origin of these close-in super-Earths…
To understand giant planet formation, we need to focus on host stars close to $1.7\ \rm M_{\odot}$, where the occurrence rate of these planets is the highest. In this initial study, we carry out pebble-driven core accretion planet formation…
The correlation between stellar metallicity and the presence of giant planets is well established. It has been tentatively explained by the possible increase of planet formation probability in stellar disks with enhanced amount of metals.…
We present preliminary results from our spectroscopic search for planets within 1 AU of metal-poor field dwarfs using NASA time with HIRES on Keck I. The core accretion model of gas giant planet formation is sensitive to the metallicity of…
An unsolved issue in the standard core accretion model for gaseous planet formation is how kilometre-sized planetesimals form from, initially, micron-sized dust grains. Solid growth beyond metre sizes can be difficult both because the…
The formation of super-Earths, the most abundant planets in the Galaxy, remains elusive. These planets have masses that typically exceed that of the Earth by a factor of a few; appear to be predominantly rocky, although often surrounded by…
Planets acquire atmospheres from their parent circumstellar disks. We derive a general analytic expression for how the atmospheric mass grows with time $t$, as a function of the underlying core mass $M_{\rm core}$ and nebular conditions,…
Sub-Neptune planets are a very common type of planets. They are inferred to harbour a primordial (H/He) envelope, on top of a (rocky) core, which dominates the mass. Here, we investigate the long-term consequences of the core properties on…
The two current models for giant planet formation are core accretion and disk instability. We discuss the core masses and overall planetary enrichment in heavy elements predicted by the two formation models, and show that both models could…
Measured disk masses seem to be too low to form the observed population of planetary systems. In this context, we develop a population synthesis code in the pebble accretion scenario, to analyse the disk mass dependence on planet formation…
Numerical simulations show that the migration of growing planetary cores may be dominated by turbulent fluctuations in the protoplanetary disk, rather than by any mean property of the flow. We quantify the impact of this stochastic core…