Related papers: Tides Alone Cannot Explain Kepler Planets Close to…
We propose a planet formation scenario to explain the elevated occurrence rates of transiting planets around M dwarfs compared to sun-like stars discovered by Kepler. We use a pebble drift and accretion model to simulate the growth of…
We present an extended version of the Constant Time Lag analytical approach for the tidal evolution of circumbinary planets introduced in our previous work. The model is self-consistent, in the sense that all tidal interactions between…
Doppler planet searches revealed that many giant planets orbit close to their host star or in highly eccentric orbits. These and subsequent observations inspired new theories of planet formation that invoke gravitation interactions in…
Planets in the liquid-water habitable zone of low-mass stars experience large tidal forces, $10^3$ to $10^4$ times those on Earth, due to the small distance between the habitable zone and the host stars. Therefore, interior solid tides,…
Orbits of known extrasolar planets that are located outside the tidal circularization regions of their parent stars are often substantially eccentric. By contrast, planetary orbits in our Solar System are approximately circular, reflecting…
Exoplanet surveys like Kepler, TESS, and K2 have shown that planetary systems are common in our galaxy. These surveys, along with several others, have identified thousands of planetary candidates, with more than five thousand having already…
Exoplanet systems are thought to evolve on secular timescales over billions of years. This evolution is impossible to directly observe on human timescales in most individual systems. While the availability of accurate and precise age…
The exotic range of known planetary systems has provoked an equally exotic range of physical explanations for their diverse architectures. However, constraining formation processes requires mapping the observed exoplanet population to that…
The distribution of the orbits of close-in exoplanets shows evidence for on-going removal and destruction by tides. Tides raised on a planet's host star cause the planet's orbit to decay, even after the orbital eccentricity has dropped to…
At least two multi-planetary systems in a 4:3 mean motion resonance have been found by radial velocity surveys. These planets are gas giants and the systems are only stable when protected by a resonance. Additionally the Kepler mission has…
The Kepler high-precision planetary sample has revealed a radius valley, separating compact super-Earths from sub-Neptunes with lower density. Super-Earths are generally assumed to be rocky planets that were probably born in-situ, while the…
We report on the properties of eclipsing binaries from the Kepler mission with a newly developed photometric modeling code, which uses the light curve, spectral energy distribution of each binary, and stellar evolution models to infer…
We explore the possibility that extrasolar planets might be found in the 1:1 mean-motion resonance. There are a variety of stable co-orbtial configurations, and we specifically examine three different versions of the 1:1 resonance. These…
Although the architectures of compact multiple-planet systems are well-characterized, there has been little examination of their "outer edges", or the locations of their outermost planets. Here we present evidence that the observed…
Water worlds have been hypothesized as an alternative to photo-evaporation in order to explain the gap in the radius distribution of Kepler exoplanets. We explore water worlds within the framework of a joint mass-radius-period distribution…
Most Neptune-mass planets in close-in orbits (orbital periods less than a few days) present nonzero eccentricity, typically around 0.15. This is somehow unexpected, as these planets undergo strong tidal dissipation that should circularize…
The Kepler mission is dramatically increasing the number of planets known in multi-planetary systems. Many adjacent planets have orbital period ratios near resonant values, with a tendency to be larger than required for exact first-order…
Evolution of binary objects under the influence of tides drastically affects the expected observational properties of the system. With the discovery of a large number of close-in hot Jupiter systems and eclipsing binaries from missions such…
We extract Transit Timing Variation (TTV) signals for 12 pairs of transiting planet candidates that are near first-order Mean Motion Resonances (MMR), using publicly available Kepler light curves (Q0-Q14). These pairs show significant…
The nearly circular (mean eccentricity <e>~0.06) and coplanar (mean mutual inclination <i>~3 deg) orbits of the Solar System planets motivated Kant and Laplace to put forth the hypothesis that planets are formed in disks, which has…