Related papers: Debris Disks: Structure, Composition, and Variabil…
The study of the planet-debris disk connection can shed light on the formation and evolution of planetary systems, and may help predict the presence of planets around stars with certain disk characteristics. In preliminary analyses of the…
The presence of debris disks around young main sequence stars hints at the existence and structure of planetary systems. Millimeter-wavelength observations probe large grains that trace the location of planetesimal belts. The FEPS…
During the past five years, the Spitzer Space Telescope and improved ground-based facilities have enabled a huge increase in the number of circumstellar disks, around young stars of Solar mass or smaller, in which the composition of the…
Protoplanetary disks composed of dust and gas are ubiquitous around young stars and are commonly recognized as nurseries of planetary systems. Their lifetime, appearance, and structure are determined by an interplay between stellar…
Resolved images suggest that asymmetric structures are a common feature of cold debris disks. While planets close to these disks are rarely detected, their hidden presence and gravitational perturbations provide plausible explanations for…
Over the past 10 years abundant evidence has emerged that many (if not all) stars are born with circumstellar disks. Understanding the evolution of post-accretion disks can provide strong constraints on theories of planet formation and…
This review chapter for young researchers presents our current understanding of debris discs. It introduces some of their basic properties and observables, and describes how we think they form and collisionally evolve. Special emphasis is…
Planetesimals form in gas-rich protoplanetary disks around young stars. However, protoplanetary disks fade in about 10 Myr. The planetesimals (and also many of the planets) left behind are too dim to study directly. Fortunately, collisions…
We discuss the properties of several circumstellar debris disk systems imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer in a survey of young stars with known far-IR excesses. These dusty disks…
The eccentric orbits of the known extrasolar giant planets provide evidence that most planet-forming environments undergo violent dynamical instabilities. Here, we numerically simulate the impact of giant planet instabilities on planetary…
Several hundred stars older than 10 million years have been observed to have infrared excesses. These observations are explained by dust grains formed by the collisional fragmentation of hidden planetesimals. Such dusty planetesimal discs…
There is currently debate over whether the dust content of planetary systems is stochastically regenerated or originates in planetesimal belts evolving in steady state. In this paper a simple model for the steady state evolution of debris…
We present models for the formation of terrestrial planets, and the collisional evolution of debris disks, in planetary systems that contain multiple unstable gas giants. We previously showed that the dynamics of the giant planets…
We have collected a catalog of 1095 debris disks with properties and classification (resolved, planet, gas) information. From the catalog, we defined a less biased sample with 612 objects and presented the distributions of their stellar and…
Main sequence stars are commonly surrounded by debris disks, formed by cold far-IR-emitting dust that is thought to be continuously replenished by a reservoir of undetected dust-producing planetesimals. We have investigated the orbital…
Debris disc analysis and modelling provide crucial information about the structure and the processes at play in extrasolar planetary systems. In binary systems, this issue is more complex because the disc should in addition respond to the…
Debris disks -- collisionally sustained belts of dust and sometimes gas around main sequence stars -- are remnants of planet formation processes and are found in systems ${\gtrsim}10$ Myr old. Millimeter-wavelength observations are…
In this paper a simple analytical model for the steady-state evolution of debris disks due to collisions is confronted with Spitzer observations of main sequence A stars. All stars are assumed to have planetesimal belts with a distribution…
A clear understanding of the chemical processing of matter, as it is transferred from a molecular cloud to a planetary system, depends heavily on knowledge of the physical conditions endured by gas and dust as these accrete onto a disk and…
Debris disks are scaled-up analogs of the Kuiper Belt in which dust is generated by collisions between planetesimals. In the "collisional cascade" model of debris disks, dust lost to radiation pressure and winds is constantly replenished by…