Related papers: The Evolution and Internal Structure of Jupiter an…
We review our current understanding of the interior structure and thermal evolution of Saturn, with a focus on recent results in the Cassini era. There has been important progress in understanding physical inputs, including equations of…
The low luminosity of Uranus is a long-standing challenge in planetary science. Simple adiabatic models are inconsistent with the measured luminosity, which indicates that Uranus is non-adiabatic because it has thermal boundary layers…
Many hot and ultra-hot Jupiters have inflated radii, implying that their interiors retain significant entropy from formation. These hot interiors lead to an enhanced internal heat flux that impinges upon the atmosphere from below. In this…
The observed masses and radii of sub-Neptunes are typically explained by the gas dwarf and the water world scenarios. While their evolutionary history on a population level has been proposed as a method to distinguish between these…
It has recently been shown that the terrestrial planets and asteroid belt can be reproduced if the giant planets underwent an inward-then-outward migration (the "Grand Tack"; Walsh et al 2011). Inward migration occurs when Jupiter opens a…
Tidal dissipation in planetary interiors is one of the key physical mechanisms that drive the evolution of star-planet and planet-moon systems. New constraints are now obtained both in the Solar and exoplanetary systems. Tidal dissipation…
The connection between the atmospheric composition of giant planets and their origin remains elusive. In this study, we explore how convective mixing can link the primordial planetary state to its atmospheric composition. We simulate the…
The four massive Galilean satellites are believed to have formed within a circumplanetary disk during the last stages of Jupiter's formation. While the existence of a circum-jovian disk is supported by hydrodynamic simulations, no consensus…
Jupiter's atmosphere is enriched with heavy elements by a factor of about 3 compared to proto-solar. The origin of this enrichment and whether it represent the bulk composition of the planetary envelope remain unknown. Internal structure…
We build on recent new evolutionary models of Jupiter and Saturn and here extend our calculations to investigate the evolution of extrasolar giant planets of mass 0.15 to 3.0 M_J. Our inhomogeneous thermal history models show that the…
We have investigated Saturn's core formation at a radial pressure maximum in a protoplanetary disk, which is created by gap opening by Jupiter. A core formed via planetesimal accretion induces the fragmentation of surrounding planetesimals,…
The temperature structure of a giant planet was traditionally thought to be an adiabat assuming convective mixing homogenizes entropy. The only in-situ measurement made by the Galileo Probe detected a near-adiabatic temperature structure…
We study the possibility that the mutual interactions between Jupiter and Saturn prevented Type II migration from driving these planets much closer to the Sun. Our work extends previous results by Masset and Snellgrove (2001), by exploring…
The dynamical features of the irregular satellites of the giant planets argue against an in-situ formation and are strongly suggestive of a capture origin. Since the last detailed investigations of their dynamics, the total number of…
Sub-Neptunes occupy an intriguing region of planetary mass-radius space, where theoretical models of interior structure predict that they could be water-rich, where water is in steam and supercritical state. Such planets are expected to…
Uranus and Neptune form a distinct class of planets in our solar system. Given this fact, and ubiquity of similar-mass planets in other planetary systems, it is essential to understand their interior structure and composition. However,…
Uranus and Neptune are commonly considered ice giants, and it is often assumed that, in addition to a solar mix of hydrogen and helium, they contain roughly twice as much water as rock. This classical picture has led to successful models of…
The origin of close-in giant planets is a key open question in planet formation theory. The two leading models are (i) formation at the outer disk followed by migration and (ii) in situ formation. In this work we determine the atmospheric…
Many planets in the solar system and across the galaxy have hydrogen-rich atmospheres overlying more heavy element-rich interiors with which they interact for billions of years. Atmosphere-interior interactions are thus crucial to…
The outer giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, pose a challenge to theories of planet formation. They exist in a region of the Solar System where long dynamical timescales and a low primordial density of material would have conspired to make…