Related papers: The birth environment of planetary systems
The physical conditions in molecular clouds control the nature and rate of star formation, with consequences for planet formation and galaxy evolution. The focus of this review is on the conditions that characterize regions of star…
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…
As of today over 40 planetary systems have been discovered in binary star systems. In all cases the configuration appears to be circumstellar, where the planets orbit around one of the stars, the secondary acting as a perturber. The…
Most stars, perhaps even all stars, form in crowded stellar environments. Such star forming regions typically dissolve within ten million years, while others remain bound as stellar groupings for hundreds of millions to billions of years,…
Young stars form on a wide range of scales, producing aggregates and clusters with various degrees of gravitational self-binding. The loose aggregates have a hierarchical structure in both space and time that resembles interstellar…
Circumstellar disks are an integral part of the star formation process and the sites where planets are formed. Understanding the physical processes that drive their evolution, as disks evolve from optically thick to optically thin, is…
The chemical environment in circumstellar discs is a unique diagnostic of the thermal, physical and chemical environment. In this paper we examine the structure of star formation regions giving rise to low mass stars, and the chemical…
In multiple stellar systems interactions among the companion stars and their discs affect planet formation. In the circumstellar case tidal truncation makes protoplanetary discs smaller, fainter and less long-lived than those evolving in…
(Abridged) Recent surveys of young star formation regions have shown that the average Class II object does not have enough dust mass to make the cores of giant planets. Younger Class 0/I objects have enough dust in their embedded disk,…
We consider trends resulting from two formation mechanisms for short-period super-Earths: planet-planet scattering and migration. We model scenarios where these planets originate near the snow line in ``cold finger'' circumstellar disks.…
Planet formation is generally described in terms of a system containing the host star and a protoplanetary disc, of which the internal properties (e.g. mass and metallicity) determine the properties of the resulting planetary system.…
While it is widely accepted that planets are formed in protoplanetary disks, there is still much debate on when this process happens. In a few cases protoplanets have been directly imaged, but for the vast majority of systems, disk gaps and…
The great diversity of extrasolar planetary systems has challenged our understanding of how planets form, and how their orbits evolve as they form. Among the various processes that may account for this diversity, the gravitational…
The lifetime of protoplanetary disks is a crucial parameter for planet formation research. Observations of disk fractions in star clusters imply median disk lifetimes of 1 -- 3 Myr. This very short disk lifetime calls for planet formation…
Both simulations and observations indicate that stars form in filamentary, hierarchically clustered associations, most of which disperse into their galactic field once feedback destroys their parent clouds. However, during their early…
The very first stars to form in the Universe heralded an end to the cosmic dark ages and introduced new physical processes that shaped early cosmic evolution. Until now, it was thought that these stars lived short, solitary lives, with only…
Planets are formed inside disks around young stars. The gas, dust, and ice in these natal disks are the building materials of planets, and therefore their compositions fundamentally shape the final chemical compositions of planets. In this…
Protoplanetary discs are dynamic environments where the interplay between chemical processes and mass transport shapes the composition of gas and dust available for planet formation. We investigate the combined effects of volatile chemistry…
The young star clusters we observe today are the building blocks of a new generation of stars and planets in our Galaxy and beyond. Despite their fundamental role we still lack knowledge about the conditions under which star clusters form…
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…