Related papers: The grain size survival threshold in one-planet po…
The recent detections of temperate terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars and the promise of characterizing their atmospheres motivates a need to understand how the diversity of possible planetary parameters affects the climate of…
White dwarfs that have accreted planetary materials provide a powerful tool to probe the interiors and formation of exoplanets. In particular, the high Fe/Si ratio of some white dwarf pollutants suggests that they are fragments of bodies…
During their main sequence lifetimes, the majority of all Galactic Disc field stars must endure at least one stellar intruder passing within a few hundred AU. Mounting observations of planet-star separations near or beyond this distance…
The evolution of binary systems consisting of an asymptotic giant branch star of mass equal to 3 M_sun or 5 M_sun, and a main sequence star of mass equal to 0.4 M_sun or 0.6 M_sun with orbital periods > 200 days has been followed from the…
The three-dimensional microstructure of Ni, observed after five annealing intervals, was compared to simulations of grain growth using the threshold dynamics method with the assumption of capillarity as the only driving force. A…
In seven billion years, the Sun will be dead. As stars like the Sun pass from their present state to that of a dead white dwarf star, they undergo two phases of extremely high luminosity and radius -- the red giant branch and the asymptotic…
Exoplanetary systems are found not only among single stars, but also binaries of widely varying parameters. Binaries with separations of 100--1000 au are prevalent in the Solar neighborhood; at these separations planet formation around a…
Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets outside the solar system, most of which orbit stars that will eventually evolve into red giants and then into white dwarfs. During the red giant phase, any close-orbiting planets will be…
This study proposes a new analytical model for grain boundary pinning by second phase particles in two-dimensional polycrystals. This approach not only considers how particles impede grain growth, but also elucidates their role in…
We present a new multi-annulus code for the study of collisionally evolving extended debris discs. We first aim to confirm results obtained for a single-annulus system, namely that the size distribution in "real" debris discs always departs…
We aim to study the migration of growing dust grains in protoplanetary discs, where growth and migration are tightly coupled. This includes the crucial issue of the radial-drift barrier for growing dust grains. We therefore extend the study…
The distance to the stars is a fundamental parameter, which is determined via two primary methods - parallax and luminosity. While the parallax is a direct trigonometric method, the luminosity distance is usually influenced by interstellar…
(abridged) In the core accretion scenario for the formation of planetary rocky cores, the first step toward planet formation is the growth of dust grains into larger and larger aggregates and eventually planetesimals. Although dust grains…
This paper extends our previous study of planet/brown dwarf accretion by giant stars to solar mass stars located on the red giant branch. The model assumes that the planet is dissipated at the bottom of the convective envelope of the giant…
Circumstantial evidence suggests that most known extra-solar planetary systems are survivors of violent dynamical instabilities. Here we explore how giant planet instabilities affect the formation and survival of terrestrial planets. We…
Giant planets and brown dwarfs are thought to form via a combination of pathways, including bottom-up mechanisms in which gas is accreted onto a solid core and top-down mechanisms in which gas collapses directly into a gravitationally-bound…
Substantial orbital migration of massive planets may occur in most extrasolar planetary systems. Since migration is likely to occur after a significant fraction of the dust has been locked up into planetesimals, ubiquitous migration could…
The planet-hosting and Sirius-type binary system epsilon Reticulum (HD 27442) is examined from the perspective of its more evolved white dwarf secondary. The stellar parameters are determined from a combination of Balmer line spectroscopy,…
The recent discovery of two Earth-mass planets in close orbits around an evolved star has raised questions as to whether substellar companions can survive encounters with their host stars. We consider whether these companions could have…
Aims: Grain growth has been suggested as one possible explanation for the diminished dust optical depths in the inner regions of protoplanetary "transition" disks. In this work, we directly test this hypothesis in the context of current…