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Evidence of mutually inclined planetary orbits has been reported for giant planets these last years. Here we aim to study the impact of eccentric and inclined massive giant planets on the terrestrial planet formation process, and…
We review the observed properties of exoplanets found by the Doppler technique which has revealed 152 exoplanets to date. We focus on our ongoing 18-year survey of 1330 FGKM type stars at Lick, Keck, and the Anglo-Australian Telescopes…
The basic geometry of the Solar System -- the shapes, spacings, and orientations of the planetary orbits -- has long been a subject of fascination as well as inspiration for planet formation theories. For exoplanetary systems, those same…
This paper considers whether the population of known transiting exoplanets provides evidence for additional outer planets on inclined orbits, due to the perturbing effect of such planets on the orbits of inner planets. As such, we develop a…
Short-period super-Earths and mini-Neptunes encircle more than $\sim50\%$ of Sun-like stars and are relatively amenable to direct observational characterization. Despite this, environments in which these planets accrete are difficult to…
Due to fortuitous circumstances, the two giant planets around Kepler-419 have well characterized 3-D orbits. They are nearly coplanar to each other; the inner one has a large eccentricity (~0.82); and the apses of the two orbits librate…
For centuries, our knowledge of planetary systems and ideas about planet formation were based on a single example, our solar system. During the last thirteen years, the discovery of ~170 planetary systems has ushered in a new era for…
Observations in the past decade have revealed extrasolar planets with a wide range of orbital semimajor axes and eccentricities. Based on the present understanding of planet formation via core accretion and oligarchic growth, we expect that…
The Kepler mission's discovery of a number of circumbinary planets orbiting close (a_p < 1.1 au) to the stellar binary raises questions as to how these planets could have formed given the intense gravitational perturbations the dual stars…
The orbits of close-in exoplanets provide clues to their formation and evolutionary history. Many close-in exoplanets likely formed far out in their protoplanetary disks and migrated to their current orbits, perhaps via high-eccentricity…
Gravitational scattering between massive planets has been invoked to explain the eccentricity distribution of extrasolar planets. For scattering to occur, the planets must either form in -- or migrate into -- an unstable configuration. In…
(Abridged) The observed radial velocity (RV) eccentricity distribution for extrasolar planets in single-planet systems shows that a significant fraction of planets are eccentric ($e > 0.1$). Here we investigate the effects on an RV planet's…
Orbital eccentricity is one of the basic planetary properties, whose distribution may shed light on the history of planet formation and evolution. Here, in a series of works on Planetary Orbit Eccentricity Trends (dubbed POET), we study the…
Most of super-Earths detected by the radial velocity (RV) method have significantly smaller eccentricities than the eccentricities corresponding to velocity dispersion equal to their surface escape velocity ("escape eccentricities"). If…
The distribution of spin-orbit angles for systems with wide-separation, tidally detached exoplanets offers a unique constraint on the prevalence of dynamically violent planetary evolution histories. Tidally detached planets provide a…
The Kepler Mission has discovered thousands of exoplanets and revolutionized our understanding of their population. This large, homogeneous catalog of discoveries has enabled rigorous studies of the occurrence rate of exoplanets and…
We study how close-in systems such as those detected by Kepler are affected by the dynamics of bodies in the outer system. We consider two scenarios: outer systems of giant planets potentially unstable to planet--planet scattering, and wide…
We develop a simple model of planetary formation, focusing our attention on those planets with masses less than 10 Earth masses and studying particularly the primordial spin parameters of planets resulting from the accretion of…
Exoplanet discoveries over recent years have shown that terrestrial planets are exceptionally common. Many of these planets are in compact systems that result in complex orbital dynamics. A key step toward determining the surface conditions…
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…