Related papers: Do planets remember how they formed?
Observational surveys for extrasolar planets probe the diverse outcomes of planet formation and evolution. These surveys measure the frequency of planets with different masses, sizes, orbital characteristics, and host star properties. Small…
The stability limit for circumbinary planets (CBPs) is not well defined and can depend on initial parameters defining either the planetary orbit or the inner binary orbit. We expand on the work of Holman & Wiegert (1999, AJ 117, 621) to…
Our understanding of the process of terrestrial planet formation has grown markedly over the past 20 years, yet key questions remain. This review begins by first addressing the critical, earliest stage of dust coagulation and concentration.…
The Kepler transit survey with follow-up spectroscopic observations has discovered numerous super-Earth sized planets and revealed intriguing features of their sizes, orbital periods, and their relations between adjacent planets. For the…
The Kepler Mission is exploring the diversity of planets and planetary systems. Its legacy will be a catalog of discoveries sufficient for computing planet occurrence rates as a function of size, orbital period, star-type, and insolation…
The compact multi-transiting planet systems discovered by Kepler challenge planet formation theories. Formation in situ from disks with radial mass surface density, $\Sigma$, profiles similar to the minimum mass solar nebula (MMSN) but…
Among other things, studies of the formation and evolution of planetary systems currently draw on two important observational resources: the precise characterization available for planets that transit their parent stars and the frequency…
The rich diversity of multi-planetary systems and their architectures is greatly contrasted by the uniformity exhibited within many of these systems. Previous studies have shown that compact Kepler systems tend to exhibit a peas-in-a-pod…
Multiple planets undergoing disk migration may be captured into a chain of mean-motion resonances with the innermost planet parked near the disk's inner edge. Subsequent dynamical evolution may disrupt these resonances, leading to the…
As part of a national scientific network 'Pathways to Habitability' the formation of planets and the delivery of water onto these planets is a key question as water is essential for the development of life. In the first part of the paper we…
We specify the range to which perturbations penetrate a planetesimal system. Such perturbations can originate from massive planets or from encounters with other stars. The latter can have an origin in the star cluster in which the planetary…
Super-Earths and mini-Neptunes exhibit great diversity in their compositional and orbital properties. Their bulk densities span a large range, from those dense enough to be purely rocky to those needing a substantial contribution from…
The transits of a planet on a Keplerian orbit occur at time intervals exactly equal to the period of the orbit. If a second planet is introduced the orbit is not Keplerian and the transits are no longer exactly periodic. We compute the…
It is often assumed that the "Kepler dichotomy" -- the apparent excess of planetary systems with a single detected transiting planet in the Kepler catalog -- reflects an intrinsic bimodality in the mutual inclinations of planetary orbits.…
The ejection of planets by the instability of planetary systems is a potential source of free-floating planets. We numerically simulate multi-planet systems to study the evolution process, the properties of surviving systems, and the…
The interpretation of the origin of observed exoplanets is usually done only qualitatively due to uncertainties of key parameters in planet formation models. To allow a quantitative methodology which traces back in time to the planet birth…
The collection of planetary system properties derived from large surveys such as Kepler provides critical constraints on planet formation and evolution. These constraints can only be applied to planet formation models, however, if the…
Surveys have revealed many multi-planet systems containing super-Earths and Neptunes in orbits of a few days to a few months. There is debate whether in situ assembly or inward migration is the dominant mechanism of the formation of such…
The Kepler Mission has detected dozens of compact planetary systems with more than four transiting planets. This sample provides a collection of close-packed planetary systems with relatively little spread in the inclination angles of the…
The formation of giant planets is best studied through direct imaging by observing planets both during and after formation. Giant planets are expected to form either by core accretion, which is typically associated with low initial entropy…