Related papers: Disc fragmentation rarely forms planetary-mass obj…
It is quite likely that self-gravity will play an important role in the evolution of accretion discs, in particular those around young stars, and those around supermassive black holes. We summarise, here, our current understanding of the…
The gravitational instability model of planet/brown dwarf formation proposes that protostellar discs can fragment into objects with masses above a few Jupiter masses at large semimajor axis. Tidal downsizing may reduce both the object mass…
We examine whether massive-star accretion disks are likely to fragment due to self-gravity. Rapid accretion and high angular momentum push these disks toward fragmentation, whereas viscous heating and the high protostellar luminosity…
This paper constructs a theoretical framework for calculating the distribution of masses for secondary bodies forming via gravitational instability in the outer regions of circumstellar disks. We show that several alternate ways to specify…
The origin of very low-mass hydrogen-burning stars, brown dwarfs, and planetary-mass objects at the low-mass end of the initial mass function is not yet fully understood. Gravitational fragmentation of circumstellar discs provides a…
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…
Context: Around 30 per cent of the observed exoplanets that orbit M dwarf stars are gas giants that are more massive than Jupiter. These planets are prime candidates for formation by disc instability. Aims: We want to determine the…
Observations of structure in circumstellar debris discs provide circumstantial evidence for the presence of massive planets at large (several tens of au) orbital radii, where the timescale for planet formation via core accretion is…
A key outstanding question in star and planet formation is how far the initial mass function of stars and sub-stellar objects extends, and whether or not there is a cut-off at the very lowest masses. Isolated objects in the planetary-mass…
A large fraction of brown dwarfs and low-mass stars may form by gravitational fragmentation of relatively massive (a few 0.1 Msun), extended (a few hundred AU) discs around Sun-like stars. We present an ensemble of radiative hydrodynamic…
The migration of planets plays an important role in the early planet-formation process. An important problem has been that standard migration theories predict very rapid inward migration, which poses problems for population synthesis…
The formation and evolution of a circumstellar disk in magnetized cloud cores is investigated from prestellar core stage until sim 10^4 yr after protostar formation. In the circumstellar disk, fragmentation first occurs due to gravitational…
Recent direct imaging discoveries suggest a new class of massive, distant planets around A stars. These widely separated giants have been interpreted as signs of planet formation driven by gravitational instability, but the viability of…
Many protoplanetary discs are self-gravitating early in their lives. If they fragment under their own gravity, they form bound gaseous clumps which may evolve to become giant planets. Today, the fraction of discs that undergo fragmentation,…
We carry out three dimensional radiation hydrodynamical simulations of gravitationally unstable discs to explore the movement of mass in a disc following its initial fragmentation. We find that the radial velocity of the gas in some parts…
Context: We studied numerically the formation of giant planet (GP) and brown dwarf (BD) embryos in gravitationally unstable protostellar disks and compared our findings with directly-imaged, wide-orbit (>= 50 AU) companions known to-date.…
We report on the results of the first 3D SPH simulation of massive, gravitationally unstable protoplanetary disks with radiative transfer. We adopt a flux-limited diffusion scheme justified by the high opacity of most of the disk. The…
We investigate the fragmentation criterion in massive self-gravitating discs. We present new analysis of the fragmentation conditions which we test by carrying out global three-dimensional numerical simulations. Whilst previous work has…
The formation of brown dwarfs (BDs) due to the fragmentation of proto-stellar disks undergoing pairwise encounters was investigated. High resolution allowed the use of realistic initial disk models where both the vertical structure and the…
Free-floating planetary-mass objects (FFPs) have been detected through direct imaging in several young, nearby star-forming regions. The properties of circumstellar disks around these objects may provide a valuable probe into their origin…