Related papers: Do planets remember how they formed?
(abridged) Observations of exoplanets indicate the existence of several correlations in the architecture of planetary systems. Exoplanets within a system tend to be of similar size and mass, evenly spaced, and are often ordered in size and…
A question driving many studies is whether the thousands of exoplanets known today typically formed where we observe them or formed further out in the disk and migrated in. Early discoveries of giant exoplanets orbiting near their host…
The limited completeness of the Kepler sample for planets with orbital periods $\gtrsim$ 1 yr leaves open the possibility that exoplanetary systems may host undetected giant planets. Should such planets exist, their dynamical interactions…
Due to the high stellar densities in young clusters, planetary systems formed in these environments are likely to have experienced perturbations from encounters with other stars. We carry out direct $N$-body simulations of multi-planet…
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 present a Monte Carlo model for the structure of low mass (total mass < 25 earth mass) planetary systems that form by the in situ gravitational assembly of planetary embryos into final planets. Our model includes distributions of mass,…
NASA's Kepler mission identified over 4000 extrasolar planets that transit (cross in front of) their host stars. This sample has revealed detailed features in the demographics of planet sizes and orbital spacings. However, knowledge of…
The Kepler high-precision planetary sample has revealed a radius valley, separating compact super-Earths from sub-Neptunes with lower density. Super-Earths are generally assumed to be rocky planets that were probably born in-situ, while the…
We present a study of the relative sizes of planets within the multiple candidate systems discovered with the $Kepler$ mission. We have compared the size of each planet to the size of every other planet within a given planetary system after…
Open clusters(OCs) are usually young and suitable for studying the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Hitherto, only four planets have been found with radial velocity measurements in OCs. Meanwhile, a lot of free-floating…
Most stars, perhaps even all stars, form in crowded stellar environments. Such star forming regions typically dissolve within ten million years, while others remain bound as stellar groupings for hundreds of millions to billions of years,…
Terrestrial planets are thought to be the result of a vast number of gravitational interactions and collisions between smaller bodies. We use numerical simulations to show that practically identical initial conditions result in a wide array…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
The Kepler space mission has detected a large number of exoplanets in multiple transiting planet systems. Previous studies found that these Kepler multiple planet systems exhibit an intra-system uniformity, namely planets in the same system…
Kepler has discovered hundreds of systems with multiple transiting exoplanets which hold tremendous potential both individually and collectively for understanding the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Many of these systems…
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…
The orbital parameters of the observed extrasolar planets differ strongly from those of our own solar system. The differences include planets with high masses, small semi-major axis and large eccentricities. We performed numerical…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
In the Solar system the planets' compositions vary with orbital distance, with rocky planets in close orbits and lower-density gas giants in wider orbits. The detection of close-in giant planets around other stars was the first clue that…
Newly-formed planetary systems with ages of <10 Myr offer many unique insights into the formation, evolution, and fundamental properties of extrasolar planets. These planets have fallen beyond the limits of past surveys, but as we enter the…