Related papers: Making Planet Nine: A Scattered Giant in the Outer…
We propose a pebble-driven planet formation scenario to form giant planets with high multiplicity and large orbital distances in the early gas disk phase. We perform N-body simulations to investigate the growth and migration of low-mass…
We describe a coagulation model that leads to the rapid formation of super-Earths and the cores of gas giant planets. Interaction of collision fragments with the gaseous disk is the crucial element of this model. The gas entrains small…
Disk material has been observed around both components of some young close binary star systems. It has been shown that if planets form at the right places within such disks, they can remain dynamically stable for very long times. Herein, we…
High-contrast near-infrared imaging of the nearby star HR 8799 has shown three giant planets. Such images were possible due to the wide orbits (> 25 AU) and youth (< 100 Myr) of the imaged planets, which are still hot and bright as they…
We present models for the formation of terrestrial planets, and the collisional evolution of debris disks, in planetary systems that contain multiple unstable gas giants. We previously showed that the dynamics of the giant planets…
Circumstantial evidence suggests that most known extra-solar planetary systems are survivors of violent dynamical instabilities. Here we explore how giant planet instabilities affect the formation and survival of terrestrial planets. We…
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…
Exoplanets around different types of stars provide a window into the diverse environments in which planets form. This chapter describes the observed relations between exoplanet populations and stellar properties and how they connect to…
Massive cores of the giant planets are thought to have formed in a gas disk by accretion of pebble-size particles whose accretional cross-section is enhanced by aerodynamic gas drag [1][2]. A commonly held view is that the terrestrial…
All the four giant planets in our Solar System have rings, but their characteristics are very different. The rings consist of a number of small particles, although individual particles have not been directly imaged. Near the central planet,…
Standard models of planet formation explain how planets form in axisymmetric, unperturbed disks in single star systems. However, it is possible that giant planets could have already formed when other planetary embryos start to grow. We…
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…
With the availability of considerably more data, we revisit the question of how special our Solar System is, compared to observed exoplanetary systems. To this goal, we employ a mathematical transformation that allows for a meaningful,…
Celestial bodies with a mass of M ~ 10 M_Jup have been found orbiting nearby stars. It is unknown whether these objects formed like gas-giant planets through core accretion or like stars through gravitational instability. I show that…
Planet Nine is a hypothetical planet located well beyond Pluto that has been proposed in an attempt to explain the observed clustering in physical space of the perihelia of six extreme trans-Neptunian objects or ETNOs. The predicted…
Kepler has identified over 600 multiplanet systems, many of which have several planets with orbital distances smaller than that of Mercury -- quite different from the Solar System. Because these systems may be difficult to explain in the…
We use a semi-analytic circumstellar disk model that considers movement of the snow line through evolution of accretion and the central star to investigate how gas giant frequency changes with stellar mass. The snow line distance changes…
In the standard model of core accretion, the formation of giant planets occurs by two main processes: first, a massive core is formed by the accretion of solid material; then, when this core exceeds a critical value (typically greater than…
Planet Nine has been proposed to potentially be a black hole in the outer solar system. We investigate the accretion flares that would result from impacts of small Oort cloud objects, and find that the upcoming LSST observing program will…
In this Thesis I studied the formation of the four giant planets of the Solar System in the framework of the nucleated instability hypothesis. The model considers that solids and gas accretion are coupled in an interactive fashion, taking…