Related papers: Debris Disks: Probing Planet Formation
Many debris discs reveal a two-component structure, with a cold outer and a warm inner component. While the former are likely massive analogues of the Kuiper belt, the origin of the latter is still a matter of debate. In this work we…
Recent detailed observations of protoplanetary discs revealed a lot of sub-structures which are mostly ring-like. One interpretation is that these rings are caused by growing planets. These potential planets are not yet opening very deep…
Planets are a natural byproduct of the stellar formation process, resulting from local aggregations of material within the disks surrounding young stars. Whereas signatures of gas-giant planets at large orbital separations have been…
(abridged) In the core accretion scenario for the formation of planetary rocky cores, the first step toward planet formation is the growth of dust grains into larger and larger aggregates and eventually planetesimals. Although dust grains…
The aim of this study is to investigate the interaction of Earth-mass planets with a planetesimal disk. It is shown that an Earth-mass planet, initially located near the inner boundary of the planetesimal disk, migrates into the disk. The…
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…
While protoplanetary disks (PPDs) are generally thought to disperse within several million years, recent observations have revealed gas in their older counterparts, debris disks. The origin of this gas remains uncertain, with one…
Transition disks have dust-depleted inner regions and may represent an intermediate step of an on-going disk dispersal process, where planet formation is probably in progress. Recent millimetre observations of transition disks reveal…
The inferred dust masses from Class II protoplanetary disk observations are lower than or equal to the masses of the observed exoplanet systems. This poses the question of how planets form if their natal environments do not contain enough…
We present the discovery of debris systems around three solar mass stars based upon observations performed with the Spitzer Space Telescope as part of a Legacy Science Program, ``the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems'' (FEPS). We…
The process of planet formation offers a rich source of dust production via grain growth in protostellar discs, and via grinding of larger bodies in debris disc systems. Chemical evolution models, designed to follow the build up of metals…
Protoplanetary disks are quasi-steady structures whose evolution and dispersal determine the environment for planet formation. I review the theory of protoplanetary disk evolution and its connection to observations. Substantial progress has…
We use a multiannulus planetesimal accretion code to investigate the growth of icy planets in the outer regions of a planetesimal disk. In a quiescent minimum mass solar nebula, icy planets grow to sizes of 1000--3000 km on a timescale t =…
The radial transport, or drift, of dust has taken a critical role in giant planet formation theory. However, it has been challenging to identify dust drift pile ups in the hard-to-observe inner disk. We find that the IM Lup disk shows…
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…
The observed dust rings and gaps in protoplanetary disks could be imprints of forming planets. Even low-mass planets in the one-to-ten Earth-mass regime, that do not yet carve deep gas gaps, can generate such dust rings and gaps by driving…
Observations of protoplanetary disks provide information on planet formation and the reasons for the diversity of planetary systems. The key to understanding planet formation is the study of dust evolution from small grains to pebbles.…
The Sun and >15 percent of nearby stars are surrounded by dusty debris disks that must be collisionally replenished by asteroids and comets, as the dust would otherwise be depleted on <10 Myr timescales (ref. 1). Theoretical studies show…
We investigate under what circumstances an embedded planet in a protoplanetary disc may sculpt the dust distribution such that it observationally presents as a `transition' disc. We concern ourselves with `transition' discs that have large…
We examine the accretion of cores of giant planets from planetesimals, gas accretion onto the cores, and their orbital migration. We adopt a working model for nascent protostellar disks with a wide variety of surface density distributions…