Related papers: Giant planet swaps during close stellar encounters
Intermediate mass planets, from Super-Earth to Neptune-sized bodies, are the most common type of planets in the galaxy. The prevailing theory of planet formation, core-accretion, predicts significantly fewer intermediate-mass giant planets…
Recent discoveries of strongly misaligned transiting exoplanets pose a challenge to the established planet formation theory which assumes planetary systems to form and evolve in isolation. However, the fact that the majority of stars…
Context. Many efforts are being made to characterize extrasolar planetary systems and unveil the fundamental mechanisms of planet formation. An important aspect of the problem, which remains largely unknown, is to understand how the planet…
We study the possibility that hot Jupiters are formed through the secular gravitational interactions between two planets in eccentric orbits with relatively low mutual inclinations ($\lesssim20^\circ$) and friction due to tides raised on…
Context. Though only a handful of extrasolar planets have been discovered via direct imaging, each of these discoveries had tremendous impact on our understanding of planetary formation, stellar formation and cool atmosphere physics. Aims.…
Sub-Jupiter classed circumbinary planets discovered in close-in binary systems have orbits just beyond the dynamically unstable region, which is determined by the eccentricity and mass ratio of the host binary stars. These planets are…
Extrasolar planet surveys have begun to detect gas giant planets in orbit around M dwarf stars. While the frequency of gas giant planets around M dwarfs so far appears to be lower than that around G dwarfs, it is clearly not zero. Previous…
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…
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…
To understand the evolution of planetary systems, it is important to investigate planets in highly evolved stellar systems, and to explore the implications of their observed properties with respect to potential formation scenarios.…
Analysis of the statistical properties of exoplanets, together with those of their host stars, are providing a unique view into the process of planet formation and evolution. In this paper we explore the properties of the mass distribution…
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…
The high occurrence rates of spiral arms and large central clearings in protoplanetary disks, if interpreted as signposts of giant planets, indicate that gas giants form commonly as companions to young stars ($<$ few Myr) at orbital…
The discovery of planets around massive stars is important for understanding how planet formation and evolution is conditioned by different stellar environments. However, current planetary search surveys have failed to detect planets around…
Theories of the formation and early evolution of planetary systems postulate that planets are born in circumstellar disks, and undergo radial migration during and after dissipation of the dust and gas disk from which they formed. The…
An instability among the giant planets' orbits can match many aspects of the Solar System's current orbital architecture. We explore the possibility that this dynamical instability was triggered by the close passage of a star or substellar…
We have investigated the evolution of a pair of interacting planets embedded in a gaseous disc, considering the possibility of the resonant capture of a Super-Earth by a Jupiter mass gas giant. First, we have examined the situation where…
The giant planet occurrence rate rises with orbital period out to at least $\sim$300 days. Large-scale planetary migration through the disk has long been suspected to be the physical origin of this feature, as the timescale of standard Type…
Planetary embryos embedded in gaseous protoplanetary disks undergo Type I orbital migration. Migration can be inward or outward depending on the local disk properties but, in general, only planets more massive than several $M_\oplus$ can…
The discovery of planets in close orbits around binary stars raises questions about their formation. It is believed that these planets formed in the outer regions of the disc and then migrated through planet-disc interaction to their…