Related papers: Apsidal Clustering following the Inclination Insta…
The nucleus of M31 may be a thick eccentric disk, composed of stars traveling on nearly Keplerian orbits around a black hole or other dark compact object. This hypothesis reproduces most of the features seen in HST photometry of the center…
A significant proportion of exoplanets have been detected with highly tilted or even polar orbits relative to their host stars' equatorial planes. These unusual orbital configurations are often linked to post-disk secular interactions among…
The Kepler mission and its successor K2 have brought forth a cascade of transiting planets. Many of these planetary systems exhibit multiple members, but a large fraction possess only a single transiting example. This overabundance of…
We study the formation of the spiral structure of barred spiral galaxies, using an $N$-body model. The evolution of this $N$-body model in the adiabatic approximation maintains a strong spiral pattern for more than 10 bar rotations. We find…
We consider the stability of an accretion disk wind to cloud formation when subject to a central radiation force. For a vertical launch velocity profile that is Keplerian or flatter and the presence of a significant radiation pressure, the…
We consider the evolution of a system containing a population of massive planets formed rapidly through a fragmentation process occurring on a scale on the order of 100 au and a lower mass planet that assembles in a disc on a much longer…
A critical step toward the emergence of planets in a protoplanetary disk consists in accretion of planetesimals, bodies 1-1000 km in size, from smaller disk constituents. This process is poorly understood partly because we lack good…
We consider the dynamics of porous icy dust aggregates in a turbulent gas disk and investigate the stability of the disk. We evaluate the random velocity of porous dust aggregates by considering their self-gravity, collisions, aerodynamic…
Planet-planet perturbations can cause planets' orbital elements to change on secular timescales. Previous work has evaluated the nodal precession rate for planets in the limit of low $\alpha$ (semi-major axis ratio, 0$<$$\alpha$$\leq$1).…
Sticky particle calculations indicate that a coherent structure, a dispersion ring, forms when a cloud on a low angular momentum orbit passes close to the dynamical center of an isothermal sphere containing a central point mass. The cloud…
Solid particles in protoplanetary disks that are sufficiently super-solar in metallicity overcome turbulence generated by vertical shear to gravitationally condense into planetesimals. Super-solar metallicities result if solid particles…
Interpenetrating streams of solids and gas in a Keplerian disk produce a local, linear instability. The two components mutually interact via aerodynamic drag, which generates radial drift and triggers unstable modes. The secular instability…
A large fraction of bulgeless disk galaxies contain young compact stellar systems at their centers, in spite of the local gravitational stability of these disks. We evaluate two contrasting hypotheses for the origin of the nuclear star…
In some galaxies, the stars orbiting the supermassive black hole take the form of an eccentric nuclear disk, in which every star is on a coherent, apsidally-aligned orbit. The most famous example of an eccentric nuclear disk is the double…
Many Sun-like stars are observed to host close-in super-Earths (SEs) as part of a multi-planetary system. In such a system, the spin of the SE evolves due to spin-orbit resonances and tidal dissipation. In the absence of tides, the planet's…
The tidal radius is commonly determined analytically by equating the tidal field of the galaxy to the gravitational potential of the cluster. Stars crossing this radius can move from orbiting the cluster centre to independently orbiting the…
Exoplanetary systems that contain multiple planets on short-period orbits appear to be prevalent in the current observed exoplanetary population, yet the processes that give rise to such configurations remain poorly understood. A common…
Planetesimal formation likely lasted for millions of years in the solar nebula, and the cold classicals in the Kuiper Belt are suggested to be the direct products of streaming instability. The presence of minor planetary bodies in the outer…
Thin, Keplerian accretion disks generically become gravitationally unstable at large radius. I investigate the nonlinear outcome of such instability in cool disks using razor-thin, local, numerical models. Cooling, characterized by a…
In recent years a handful of systems have been observed to show "negative" (nodal) superhumps, with periods slightly shorter than the orbital period. It has been suggested that these modes are a consequence of the slow retrograde precession…