Related papers: Probing Unseen Planet Populations with Resolved De…
We know little about the outermost exoplanets in planetary systems, because our detection methods are insensitive to moderate-mass planets on wide orbits. However, debris discs can probe the outer-planet population, because dynamical…
Debris disks are exoplanetary systems containing planets, minor bodies (such as asteroids and comets) and debris dust. Unseen planets are presumed to perturb the minor bodies into crossing orbits, generating small dust grains that are…
Debris disks are the dust disks found around ~20% of nearby main sequence stars in far-IR surveys. They can be considered as descendants of protoplanetary disks or components of planetary systems, providing valuable information on…
Over the past three decades, exoplanet research has delivered an extensive census of planets spanning a wide range of masses, sizes, and orbital configurations. Despite this progress, the physical interpretation of these populations remains…
Observations of debris disks allow for the study of planetary systems, even where planets have not been detected. However, debris disks are often only characterized by unresolved infrared excesses that resemble featureless blackbodies, and…
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…
Resolved debris disk features (e.g., warps, offsets, edges and gaps, azimuthal asymmetries, radially thickened rings, scale heights) contain valuable information about the underlying planetary systems, such as the posited planet's mass,…
Spatially resolved scattered-light images of circumstellar (CS) debris in exoplanetary systems constrain the physical properties and orbits of the dust particles in these systems. They also inform on co-orbiting (but unseen) planets,…
The commonality of collisionally replenished debris around main sequence stars suggests that minor bodies are frequent around Sun-like stars. Whether or not debris disks in general are accompanied by planets is yet unknown, but debris 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…
Main sequence stars are commonly surrounded by debris disks, composed of cold dust continuously replenished by a reservoir of undetected dust-producing planetesimals. In a planetary system with a belt of planetesimals (like the Solar…
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…
When and how planets form in protoplanetary disks is still a topic of discussion. Exoplanet detection surveys and protoplanetary disk surveys are now providing results that allow us to have new insights. We collect the masses of confirmed…
The gravitational influence of a planet on a nearby disk provides a powerful tool for detecting and studying extrasolar planetary systems. Here we demonstrate that gaps can be opened in dynamically cold debris disks at the mean-motion…
In recent years a paradigm shift has occurred in exoplanet science, wherein low-mass stars are increasingly viewed as a foundational pillar of the search for potentially habitable worlds in the solar neighborhood. However, the formation…
Although there is abundant and diverse observational evidence in support of white dwarf stars hosting planets or debris disks which form in the catastrophic destruction of various planetary bodies, the key processes that explain these…
Circumstellar disks have long been regarded as windows into planetary systems. The advent of high sensitivity, high resolution imaging in the submillimetre where both the solid and gas components of disks can be detected opens up new…
High-contrast imaging of debris disk systems permits us to assess the composition and size distribution of circumstellar dust, to probe recent dynamical histories, and to directly detect and characterize embedded exoplanets. Observations of…
Planet formation remains a fundamentally important yet poorly understood process. Protoplanetary disks, the birthplaces of planetary systems, exhibit a wide range of substructures that are increasingly interpreted as signatures of…
The number of stars that are known to have debris disks is greater than that of stars known to harbour planets. These disks are detected because dust is created in the destruction of planetesimals in the disks much in the same way that dust…