Related papers: Could Jupiter or Saturn Have Ejected a Fifth Giant…
The discovery of many exoplanets has revealed an incredible diversity of orbital architectures. These orbital configurations are intrinsically linked to the potential for habitable environments within the system, since the gravitational…
This study considers the characteristics of planetary systems with giant planets based on a population-level analysis of the California Legacy Survey planet catalog. We identified three characteristics common to hot Jupiters. First, while…
Uranus and Neptune are the archetypes of "ice giants", a class of planets that may be among the most common in the Galaxy. They hold the keys to understand the atmospheric dynamics and structure of planets with hydrogen atmospheres inside…
The giant planets were the first to form and hold the key to unveiling the solar system's formation history in their interiors and atmospheres. Furthermore, the unique conditions present in the interiors of the giant planets make them…
The formation history of giant planets inside and outside the solar system remains unknown. We suggest that runaway gas accretion is initiated only at a mass of ~100 M_Earth and that this mass corresponds to the transition to a gas giant, a…
With more than 15 years since the the first radial velocity discovery of a planet orbiting a Sun-like star, the time baseline for radial velocity surveys is now extending out beyond the orbit of Jupiter analogs. The sensitivity to exoplanet…
Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets outside the solar system, most of which orbit stars that will eventually evolve into red giants and then into white dwarfs. During the red giant phase, any close-orbiting planets will be…
The large eccentricities of many giant extrasolar planets may represent the endpoint of gravitational scattering in initially more crowded systems. If so, the early evolution of the giant planets is likely to be more restrictive of…
Giant planets acquire gas, ices and rocks during the early formation stages of planetary systems and thus inform us on the formation process itself. Proceeding from inside out, examining the connections between the deep interiors and the…
During planet formation, a gas giant will interact with smaller protoplanets that stray within its sphere of gravitational influence. We investigate the outcome of interactions between gas giants and terrestrial-sized protoplanets with…
The shape of the two gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, is determined primarily by their rotation rate, and interior density distribution. It is also affected by their zonal winds, causing an anomaly of O(10 km) at low latitudes. However,…
This paper explores the intermediate-time dynamics of newly formed solar systems with a focus on possible mechanisms for planetary migration. We consider two limiting corners of the available parameter space -- crowded systems containing…
The weather layers of the gas giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, comprise the shallow atmospheric layers that are influenced energetically by a combination of incoming solar radiation and localised latent heating of condensates, as well as…
Using ab initio simulations we investigate whether water ice is stable in the cores of giant planets, or whether it dissolves into the layer of metallic hydrogen above. By Gibbs free energy calculations we find that for pressures between 10…
More than two decades after the widespread detection of Jovian-class planets on short-period orbits around other stars, their dynamical origins remain imperfectly understood. In the traditional narrative, these highly irradiated giant…
The GJ 1148 system has two Saturn-mass planets orbiting around an M dwarf star on hierarchical and eccentric orbits, with orbital period ratio of 13 and eccentricities of both planets of 0.375. The inner planet is in the regime of eccentric…
Orbital evolution is a critical process that sculpts planetary systems, particularly during their early stages where planet-disk interactions are expected to lead to the formation of resonant chains. Despite the theoretically expected…
Sedimentation rates of silicate grains in gas giant protoplanets formed by disk instability are calculated for protoplanetary masses between 1 M_Saturn to 10 M_Jupiter. Giant protoplanets with masses of 5 M_Jupiter or larger are found to be…
The Saturn System has been studied in detail by the Cassini-Huygens Mission. A major thrust of those investigations has been to understand how Saturn formed and evolved and to place Saturn in the context of other gas giants and planetary…
The ubiquity of planets and diversity of planetary systems reveal planet formation encompass many complex and competing processes. In this series of papers, we develop and upgrade a population synthesis model as a tool to identify the…