Related papers: Planetary Systems in Star Clusters: the dynamical …
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…
The formation of planets is one of the major unsolved problems in modern astrophysics. Planets are believed to form out of the material in circumstellar disks known to exist around young stars, and which are a by-product of the star…
Observations indicate that intermediate mass stars, binary stars, and stellar remnants often host planets; a complete explanation of these systems requires an understanding of how planetary orbits evolve as their central stars lose mass.…
Planetary systems with more than two bodies will experience orbital crossings at a time related to the initial orbital separations of the planets. After a crossing, the system enters a period of chaotic evolution ending in the reshaping of…
Most stars form in a cluster environment. These stars are initially surrounded by discs from which potentially planetary systems form. Of all cluster environments starburst clusters are probably the most hostile for planetary systems in our…
Most stars form in dense star clusters deeply embedded in residual gas. These objects must therefore be seen as the fundamental building blocks of galaxies. With this contribution some physical processes that act in the very early and also…
With the discovery of hundreds of exoplanets and a potentially huge number of Earth-like planets waiting to be discovered, the conditions for their habitability have become a focal point in exoplanetary research. The classical picture of…
A detailed understanding of the physics of star and planet formation requires study of individual objects as well as statistical assessment of global properties and evolutionary trends. Observational investigations of circumstellar material…
This chapter concerns the long-term dynamical evolution of planetary systems from both theoretical and observational perspectives. We begin by discussing the planet-planet interactions that take place within our own Solar System. We then…
As a direct result of ongoing efforts to detect more exoplanetary systems, an ever-increasing number of multiple-planet systems are being announced. But how many of these systems are truly what they seem? In many cases, such systems are…
The majority of star formation results in binaries or higher multiple systems, and planets in such systems are constrained to a limited range of orbital parameters in order to remain stable against perturbations from stellar companions.…
Stars mostly form in groups consisting of a few dozen to several ten thousand members. For 30 years, theoretical models provide a basic concept of how such star clusters form and develop: they originate from the gas and dust of collapsing…
Well before the existence of exo-solar systems was confirmed, it was accepted knowledge that most -- if not all -- stars possess circumstellar material during the first one-to-several million years of their pre-main sequence lives, and thus…
Circumstantial evidence suggests that most known extra-solar planetary systems are survivors of violent dynamical instabilities. Here we explore how giant planet instabilities affect the formation and survival of terrestrial planets. We…
In about 40% of the Local Group galaxies star clusters have been detected so far, but the census is still incomplete. The properties of these clusters are briefly reviewed, and the impact of galaxy environment on the evolution and survival…
The stars that populate the solar neighbourhood were formed in stellar clusters. Through N-body simulations of these clusters, we measure the rate of close encounters between stars. By monitoring the interaction histories of each star, we…
This paper studies the dynamical evolution of young stellar clusters with $N$ = 100 - 1000 members. We use N-body simulations to explore how evolution depends on system size $N$ and the initial conditions. Motivated by recent observations…
Observations from optical to centimeter wavelengths have demonstrated that multiple systems of two or more bodies is the norm at all stellar evolutionary stages. Multiple systems are widely agreed to result from the collapse and…
Despite the recent discoveries of planets orbiting stars at all evolutionary stages, the evolution of planetary systems remains poorly understood. Studying planetary systems around red giant branch stars can reveal how main sequence…
The solar system was most likely born in a star cluster containing at least 1000 stars. It is highly probable that this cluster environment influenced various properties of the solar system like its chemical composition, size and the…