Related papers: Twisted debris: how differential secular perturbat…
Proto-planetary discs, the birth environment of planets, are an example of a structure commonly found in astrophysics, accretion discs. Identifying the mechanism responsible for accretion is a long-standing problem, dating back several…
Several stars show deep transits consistent with discs of roughly 1 Solar radius seen at moderate inclinations, likely surrounding planets on eccentric orbits. We show that this configuration arises naturally as a result of planet-planet…
Many debris disks seen in scattered light have shapes that imply their dust grains trace highly eccentric, apsidally aligned orbits. Apsidal alignment is surprising, especially for dust. Even when born from an apse-aligned ring of parent…
Self-gravitating systems evolve toward the most tightly bound configuration that is reachable via available evolution processes. The inner parts shrink and the outer parts expand, provided that some physical process transports energy or…
In this review, I discuss just three aspects of the stability and evolution of galactic discs. (1) I first review our understanding of the bar instability and how it can be controlled. Disc galaxies in which the orbital speed does not…
We apply our recently elaborated, powerful numerical approach to the high-resolution modeling of the structure and emission of circumstellar dust disks, incorporating all relevant physical processes. Specifically, we examine the resonant…
Planet-disk interactions, where an embedded massive body interacts gravitationally with the protoplanetary disk it was formed in, can play an important role in reshaping both the disk and the orbit of the planet. Spiral density waves are…
(abridged) Debris disks around main sequence stars are produced by the erosion and evaporation of unseen parent bodies. AU Microscopii (GJ 803) is a compelling object to study in the context of disk evolution across different spectral…
Discs of gas and dust around Myr-old stars are a by-product of the star formation process and provide the raw material to form planets. Hence, their evolution and dispersal directly impact what type of planets can form and affect the final…
Meteoritic studies of solar system objects show evidence of nucleosynthetic heterogeneities that are inherited from small presolar grains (< 10 $\mu$m) formed in stellar environments external to our own. The initial distribution and…
Recent observations have demonstrated that some subset of even moderately wide-separation planet-hosting binaries are preferentially configured such that planetary and binary orbits appear to lie within the same plane. In this work, we…
Differential settling and growth of dust grains impact the structure of the radiative envelopes of gaseous planets during formation. Sufficiently rapid dust growth can result in envelopes with substantially reduced opacities for radiation…
Perturbations to stellar systems can reflect the gravitational influence of dark matter substructures. On scales much smaller than the size of a stellar system, we point out analytic connections between the stellar and dark matter…
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…
Protoplanetary disks dissipate rapidly after the central star forms, on time-scales comparable to those inferred for planet formation. In order to allow the formation of planets, disks must survive the dispersive effects of UV and X-ray…
The arising of turbulence in gas-dynamic (non-magnetic) accretion disks is a major issue of modern astrophysics. Such accretion disks should be stable against the turbulence generation, in contradiction to observations. Searching for…
The orbital eccentricity distribution of exoplanets is shaped by a combination of dynamical processes, reflecting both formation conditions and long-term evolution. Probing the orbital dynamics of planets in the kinematic thin and thick…
We analyze the gravitational collapse of solids subject to gas drag in a protoplanetary disk. We also study the stirring of solids by turbulent fluctuations to determine the velocity dispersion and thickness of the midplane particle layer.…
The formation of a planetary system from the protoplanetary disk leads to destruction of the latter; however, a debris disk can remain in the form of asteroids and cometary material. The motion of planets can cause the formation of…
The orbital parameters of the observed extrasolar planets differ strongly from those of our own solar system. The differences include planets with high masses, small semi-major axis and large eccentricities. We performed numerical…