Related papers: Formation of Super-Earths
Giant planets dominate the mass of many planetary systems, including the Solar System, and represent the best-characterized class of extrasolar planets. Understanding the formation of giant planets bridges the high mass end of the planet…
We study the formation of rocky planets by dry pebble accretion from self-consistent dust-growth models. In particular, we aim at computing the maximum core mass of a rocky planet that can sustain a thin H-He atmosphere to account for the…
Sub-Neptune planets are a very common type of planets. They are inferred to harbour a primordial (H/He) envelope, on top of a (rocky) core, which dominates the mass. Here, we investigate the long-term consequences of the core properties on…
The Neptune desert is no longer empty. A handful of close-in planets with masses between those of Neptune and Saturn have now been discovered, and their puzzling properties have inspired a number of interesting theories on the formation and…
The terrestrial and gas-giant planets in our solar system may represent some prototypes for planets around other stars; the exoplanets because most stars have similar overall elemental abundances as our sun. The solar system planets…
Planets with several Earth masses and a few day orbital periods have been discovered through radial velocity and transit surveys. Regardless of their formation mechanism, a key evolution issue is the efficiency of their retention near their…
We report on the results of an 8-year survey carried out at the La Silla Observatory with the HARPS spectrograph to detect and characterize planets in the super-Earth and Neptune mass regime. The size of our star sample and the precision…
The sample of known exoplanets is strongly biased to masses larger than the ones of the giant gaseous planets of the solar system. Recently, the discovery of two extrasolar planets of considerably lower masses around the nearby stars GJ 436…
Composition of terrestrial planets records planetary accretion, core-mantle and crust-mantle differentiation, and surface processes. Here we compare the compositional models of Earth and Mars to reveal their characteristics and formation…
Cold super-Earths which retain their primordial, H-He dominated atmosphere could have surfaces that are warm enough to host liquid water. This would be due to the collision induced absorption (CIA) of infra-red light by hydrogen, which…
The standard model for planet formation is a bottom-up process in which the origin of rocky and gaseous planets can be traced back to the collision of micron-sized dust grains within the gas-rich environment of protoplanetary disks. Key…
Our galaxy is full with planets. We now know that planets and planetary systems are diverse and come with different sizes, masses and compositions, as well as various orbital architectures. Although there has been great progress in…
`Hot jupiters,' giant planets with orbits very close to their parent stars, are thought to form farther away and migrate inward via interactions with a massive gas disk. If a giant planet forms and migrates quickly, the planetesimal…
The Core Accretion model is widely accepted as the primary mechanism for forming planets up to a few Jupiter masses. However, the formation of super-massive planets remains a subject of debate, as their formation via the Core Accretion…
Centimeter and meter sized solid particles in protoplanetary disks are trapped within long lived high pressure regions, creating opportunities for collapse into planetesimals and planetary embryos. We study the accumulations in the stable…
Gas giant planets are far easier than terrestrial planets to detect around other stars, and are thought to form much more quickly than terrestrial planets. Thus, in systems with giant planets, the late stages of terrestrial planet formation…
Structure in the planet distribution provides an insight into the processes that shape the formation and evolution of planets. The Kepler mission has led to an abundance of statistical discoveries in regards to planetary radius, but the…
Recent observations by the {\it Kepler} space telescope have led to the discovery of more than 4000 exoplanet candidates consisting of many systems with Earth- to Neptune-sized objects that reside well inside the orbit of Mercury, around…
Planets are common objects in the Universe, observationally as well as theoretically. However, the standard theory of their formation encounters many difficulties, such as dust fall and disk lifetime problems. We positively analyze them,…
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…