Related papers: Debris Disk Composition: A Diagnostic Tool for Pla…
A significant fraction of the mature FGK stars have cool dusty disks at least an orders of magnitudes brighter than the solar system's outer zodiacal light. Since such dusts must be continually replenished, they are generally assumed to be…
Since the 1990's, protoplanetary disks and planetary disks have been intensively observed from the optical to the millimetre wavelength and many models have been developed to investigate their gas and dust properties and dynamics. These…
Debris disks, which consist of dust, planetesimals, planets, and gas, offer a unique window into the mineralogical composition of their parent bodies, especially during the critical phase of terrestrial planet formation spanning 10 to a few…
Brown dwarfs and very low mass stars are a significant fraction of stars in our galaxy, and they are interesting laboratories to investigate planet formation in extreme conditions of low temperature and densities. In addition, the dust…
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…
Although debris disks may be common in exoplanet systems, only a few systems are known in which debris disks and planets coexist. Planets and the surrounding stellar population can have a significant impact on debris disk evolution. Here we…
Giant planets have been discovered at large separations from the central star. Moreover, a striking number of young circumstellar disks have gas and/or dust gaps at large orbital separations, potentially driven by embedded planetary…
Debris discs consist of belts of bodies ranging in size from dust grains to planetesimals; these belts are visible markers of planetary systems around other stars that can reveal the influence of extrasolar planets through their shape and…
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…
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…
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 recent detections of extrasolar giant planets has revealed a surprising diversity of planetary system architectures, with many very unlike our Solar System. Understanding the origin of this diversity requires multi-wavelength studies of…
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…
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,…
Solid material in protoplanetary discs will suffer one of two fates after the epoch of planet formation; either being bound up into planetary bodies, or remaining in smaller planetesimals to be ground into dust. These end states are…
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…
Debris disks around main-sequence stars are believed to derive from planetesimal populations that have accreted at early epochs and survived possible planet formation processes. While debris disks must contain solids in a broad range of…
Planets are born from disks of gas and dust, and observations of protoplanetary disks are used to constrain the initial conditions of planet formation. However, dust mass measurements of Class II disks with ALMA have called into question…
Observations of circumstellar disks around stars as a function of stellar properties such as mass, metallicity, multiplicity, and age, provide constraints on theories concerning the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Utilizing…
Giant impacts refer to collisions between two objects each of which is massive enough to be considered at least a planetary embryo. The putative collision suffered by the proto-Earth that created the Moon is a prime example, though most…