Related papers: The birth environment of planetary systems
The initial conditions, physics, and outcome of planet formation are now constrained by detailed observations of protoplanetary disks, laboratory experiments, and the discovery of thousands of extrasolar planetary systems. These…
The surroundings of massive protostars constitute an accretion disc which has numerically been shown to be subject to fragmentation and responsible for luminous accretion-driven outbursts. Moreover, it is suspected to produce close binary…
The formation and evolution of the circumstellar disk in unmagnetized molecular clouds is investigated using three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations from the prestellar core until the end of the main accretion phase. In collapsing…
Photoevaporation driven by the ultraviolet radiation from massive stars severely limits the lifetime of protoplanetary discs around stars formed within stellar clusters. I investigate the resulting influence of clustered environments on the…
The formation and early evolution of circumstellar discs often occurs within dense, newborn stellar clusters. For the first time, we apply the moving-mesh code AREPO, to circumstellar discs in 3-D, focusing on disc-disc interactions that…
Protoplanetary disks are the sites of planet formation, and the evolution and eventual dispersal of these disks strongly influences the formation of planetary systems. Disk evolution during the planet-forming epoch is driven by accretion…
This review introduces physical processes in protoplanetary disks relevant to accretion and the initial stages of planet formation. After a brief overview of the observational context, I introduce the elementary theory of disk structure and…
Luminosities of pre-main sequence stars evolve during the protoplanetary disc lifetime. This has a significant impact on the heating of their surrounding protoplanetary disks, the natal environments of planets. Moreover, stars of different…
An overview of our current understanding of the formation and evolution of star clusters is given, with main emphasis on high-mass clusters. Clusters form deeply embedded within dense clouds of molecular gas. Left-over gas is cleared within…
Investigations of stellar encounters in cluster environments have demonstrated their potential influence on the mass and angular momentum of protoplanetary discs around young stars. In this study it is investigated in how far the initial…
The timescale over which planets may form in the circumstellar disks of young stars is one of the main issues of current planetary formation models. We present here new constraints on planet formation timescales derived from the rotational…
In young star clusters, the density can be high enough and the velocity dispersion low enough for stars to collide and merge with a significant probability. This has been suggested as a possible way to build up the high-mass portion of the…
Young galaxies are clumpy, gas-rich, and highly turbulent. Star formation appears to occur by gravitational instabilities in galactic disks. The high dispersion makes the clumps massive and the disks thick. The star formation rate should be…
(Abridged) In this review we focus on the observations and theory of the formation of early disks and outflows, and their connections with the first phases of planet formation. Large rotationally supported circumstellar disks, although…
We attempt to determine the dominant processes acting on star-forming disk galaxies as a result of the cluster environment by studying the normalised rates and radial distributions of star formation in galaxies within low-redshift clusters.…
We present results from the first population synthesis study of protostellar discs. We analyse the evolution and properties of a large sample of protostellar discs formed in a radiation hydrodynamical simulation of star cluster formation.…
An unsolved issue in the standard core accretion model for gaseous planet formation is how kilometre-sized planetesimals form from, initially, micron-sized dust grains. Solid growth beyond metre sizes can be difficult both because the…
The dust in the interstellar medium, that provides the material for forming stars - and circumstellar discs as a natural by-product - is known to have submicron sizes. As these discs are the sites of planet formation, those small grains are…
The presence of highly eccentric extrasolar planets in binary stellar systems suggests that the Kozai effect has played an important role in shaping their dynamical architectures. However, the formation of planets in inclined binary systems…
Estimates of the frequency of planetary systems in the Milky Way are observationally limited by the low-mass planet regime. Nevertheless, substantial evidence for systems with undetectably low planetary masses now exist in the form of…