Related papers: Probing Unseen Planet Populations with Resolved De…
Dust in debris disks is generated by collisions among planetesimals. The existence of these planetesimals is a consequence of the planet formation process, but the relationship between debris disks and planets has not been clearly…
Observations of structure in circumstellar debris discs provide circumstantial evidence for the presence of massive planets at large (several tens of au) orbital radii, where the timescale for planet formation via core accretion is…
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…
Flattened, rotating disks of cool dust and gas extending for tens to hundreds of AU are found around almost all low mass stars shortly after their birth. These disks generally persist for several Myr, during which time some material…
In order to explain the main characteristics of the observed population of extrasolar planets and the giant planets in the Solar System, we need to get a clear understanding of which are the initial conditions that allowed their formation.…
In the currently-favored paradigm of planet formation, the location of the snow line in the protoplanetary disk plays a crucial role. Determining the demographics of planets beyond the snow line of stars of various masses is thus essential…
Microlensing can access planet populations that no other method can probe: cold wide-orbit planets beyond the snow line, planets in both the Galactic bulge and disk, and free floating planets (FFPs). The demographics of each population will…
Circumstellar disks of planetary debris are now known or suspected to closely orbit hundreds of white dwarf stars. To date, both data and theory support disks that are entirely contained within the preceding giant stellar radii, and hence…
Recent advances in astronomical instrumentation mean that we are now able to image the thermal emission from the disks of dust around main sequence stars that may be the fossil remnants of planetary formation. These observations imply that…
Planets are thought to form from dust and gas in protoplanetary disks, and debris disks are the remnants of planet formation. Aged a few Myr up to a few Gyr, debris disks have lost their primordial gas, and their dust is produced by…
In the coming years, high contrast imaging surveys are expected to reveal the characteristics of the population of wide-orbit, massive, exoplanets. To date, a handful of wide planetary mass companions are known, but only one such…
Extrasolar debris disks are the dust disks found around nearby main sequence stars arising from the break-up of asteroids and comets orbiting the stars. Far-IR surveys (e.g., with Herschel) showed that ~20% of stars host detectable dust…
We develop a semi-analytical model for computing planetary system formation with the aim of explaining the observed diversity of planetary systems architectures and relate this primordial diversity with the initial properties of the disc…
Over the past decade, research in resolved stellar populations has made great strides in exploring the nature of dark matter, in unraveling the star formation, chemical enrichment, and dynamical histories of the Milky Way and nearby…
The radius of a planet is a fundamental parameter that probes its composition and habitability. Precise radius measurements are typically derived from the fraction of starlight blocked when a planet transits its host star. The wide-field…
Since the discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star, the confirmation of nearly 6000 exoplanets to date - and their diversity - has revolutionized our knowledge of planetary systems in the past three decades. Nevertheless,…
Planet formation is a hugely dynamic process requiring the transport, concentration and assimilation of gas and dust to form the first planetesimals and cores. With access to extremely high spatial and spectral resolution observations at…
Over the past three decades instruments on the ground and in space have discovered thousands of planets outside the solar system. These observations have given rise to an astonishingly detailed picture of the demographics of short-period…
A question central to understanding the origin of our solar system is: how do planets form in circumstellar disks around young stars? Because of the complex nature of the physical processes involved, multi-wavelength observations of large…
Low-mass planets have an extraordinarily diverse range of bulk compositions, from primarily rocky worlds to those with deep gaseous atmospheres. As techniques for measuring the masses of exoplanets are advancing the field towards the…