Related papers: The birth environment of planetary systems
Planet formation encompasses processes that span a remarkable 40 magnitudes in mass, ranging from collisions between micron-sized grains inherited from the ISM to the accretion of gas by giant planets. The planet formation process takes…
Extensive photometric stellar surveys show that many main sequence stars show emission at infrared and longer wavelengths that is in excess of the stellar photosphere; this emission is thought to arise from circumstellar dust. The presence…
The study of protoplanetary disc evolution and planet formation has mainly concentrated on solar (and low) mass stars since they host the majority of the confirmed exoplanets. Nevertheless, the numerous planets found orbiting stars up to…
In the present-day universe, it appears that most, and perhaps all, massive stars are born in star clusters. It also appears that all star clusters contain stars drawn from an approximately universal initial mass function, so that almost…
The statistical properties of circumstellar disks around young stars are important for constraining theoretical models for the formation and early evolution of planetary systems. In this brief review, I survey the literature related to…
Stars do not form in isolation but together with other stars, and often in a clustered environment. Depending on the initial conditions in these environments, such as initial density and substructure, the distances of encounters between…
While giant planet occurrence rates increase with stellar mass, occurrence rates of close-in super-Earths decrease. This is in contradiction to the expectation that the total mass of the planets in a system scale with the protoplanetary…
Protoplanetary disks (PPDs) surrounding young stars are short-lived (~0.3-10 Myr), compact (~10-1000 AU) rotating reservoirs of gas and dust. PPDs are believed to be birthplaces of planetary systems, where tiny grains are assembled into…
Planetary systems appear to form contemporaneously around young stars within young star-forming regions. Within these environments, the chances of survival, as well as the long-term evolution of these systems, are influenced by factors such…
Protoplanetary discs are crucial to understanding how planets form and evolve, but these objects are subject to the vagaries of the birth environments of their host stars. In particular, photoionising radiation from massive stars has been…
We review the current theoretical understanding how growth from micro-meter sized dust to massive giant planets occurs in disks around young stars. After introducing a number of observational constraints from the solar system, from observed…
We investigate the formation and early evolution of star clusters assuming that they form from a turbulent starless clump of given mass bounded inside a parent self-gravitating molecular cloud characterized by a particular mass surface…
This paper studies the dynamical evolution of young stellar clusters with $N$ = 100 - 1000 members. We use N-body simulations to explore how evolution depends on system size $N$ and the initial conditions. Motivated by recent observations…
Recent discoveries of extrasolar planets at small orbital radii, or with significant eccentricities, indicate that interactions between massive planets and the disks of gas and dust from which they formed are vital for determining the final…
We discuss the factors influencing the formation and gravitational fragmentation of protostellar discs. We start with a review of how observations of prestellar cores can be analysed statistically to yield plausible initial conditions for…
The goal of planet formation as a field of study is not only to provide the understanding of how planets come into existence. It is also an interdisciplinary bridge which links astronomy to geology and mineralogy. Recent observations of…
As stellar compositions evolve over time in the Milky Way, so will the resulting planet populations. In order to place planet formation in the context of Galactic chemical evolution, we make use of a large ($N = 5\,325$) stellar sample…
Circumstellar discs are the precursors of planetary systems and develop shortly after their host star has formed. In their early stages these discs are immersed in an environment rich in gas and neighbouring stars, which can be hostile for…
The frequency of discs around young stars, a key parameter for understanding planet formation, is most readily determined in young stellar clusters where many relatively coeval stars are located in close proximity. Observational studies…
This chapter reviews the dynamical processes in young stellar clusters. The accretion of gas by individual stars affects the dynamics of the cluster, and the masses of the stars. Dynamical mass segregation cannot explain the degree of mass…