Related papers: Constraining protoplanetary disks with exoplanetar…
The existence of the Oort Comet Cloud, the Kuiper Belt, and plausible inefficiencies in planetary core formation, all suggest that there was once a residual planetesimal disk of mass 10-100 Earth-masses in the vicinity of the giant planets…
We study the evolution of cold, gravitationally unstable protoplanetary gaseous disks performing 3D SPH simulations with up to a million particles on large parallel machines. We show that self-gravitating protoplanets can form in disks with…
Both core accretion and disk instability appear to be required as formation mechanisms in order to explain the entire range of giant planets found in extrasolar planetary systems. Disk instability is based on the formation of clumps in a…
Protoplanets formed in a marginally gravitationally unstable (MGU) disk by either core accretion or disk instability will be subject to dynamical interactions with massive spiral arms, possibly resulting in inward or outward orbital…
We investigate the evolution of a system of two super-Earths with masses < 4 Earth masses embedded in a turbulent protoplanetary disk. The aim is to examine whether or not resonant trapping can occur and be maintained in presence of…
Recent observations by the {\it Kepler} space telescope have led to the discovery of more than 4000 exoplanet candidates consisting of many systems with Earth- to Neptune-sized objects that reside well inside the orbit of Mercury, around…
Continued observational characterization of transiting planets that reside in close proximity to their host stars has shown that a substantial fraction of such objects posses orbits that are inclined with respect to the spin axes of their…
Observational evidence exists for the formation of gas giant planets on wide orbits around young stars by disk gravitational instability, but the roles of disk instability and core accretion for forming gas giants on shorter period orbits…
A commonly noted feature of the population of multi-planet extrasolar systems is the rarity of planet pairs in low-order mean-motion resonances. We revisit the physics of resonance capture via convergent disk-driven migration. We point out…
The recent discovery of Jupiter-mass planets orbiting at a few AU from their stars compliments earlier detections of massive planets on very small orbits. The short period orbits strongly suggest that planet migration has occurred, with the…
Doppler surveys have shown that more massive stars have significantly higher frequencies of giant planets inside $\sim$ 3 AU than lower mass stars, consistent with giant planet formation by core accretion. Direct imaging searches have begun…
The orbits of some warm Jupiters are highly inclined (20$^\circ$-50$^\circ$) to those of their exterior companions. Comparable misalignments are inferred between the outer and inner portions of some transition discs. These large…
We present an analytical and numerical study of the orbital migration and resonance capture of fictitious two-planet systems with masses in the super-Earth range undergoing Type-I migration. We find that, depending on the flare index and…
We study the dynamics of a system of two super-Earths embedded in a protoplanetary disc. We build a simple model of an irradiated viscous disc and use analytical prescriptions for the planet-disc interactions which lead to migration. We…
The orbital parameters of the observed extrasolar planets differ strongly from those of our own solar system. The differences include planets with high masses, small semi-major axis and large eccentricities. We performed numerical…
The Kepler satellite has discovered a number of transiting planets around close binary stars. These circumbinary systems have highly aligned planetary and binary orbits. In this paper, we explore how the mutual inclination between the…
We establish the three-dimensional architecture of the Kepler-419 (previously KOI-1474) system to be eccentric yet with a low mutual inclination. Kepler-419b is a warm Jupiter at semi-major axis a = 0.370 +0.007/-0.006 AU with a large…
Orbits of known extrasolar planets that are located outside the tidal circularization regions of their parent stars are often substantially eccentric. By contrast, planetary orbits in our Solar System are approximately circular, reflecting…
Exoplanet systems with multiple planets in mean motion resonances have often been hailed as a signpost of disk driven migration. Resonant chains like Kepler-223 and Kepler-80 consist of a trio of planets with the three-body resonant angle…
The regular satellites found around Neptune ($\approx 17~M_{\Earth}$) and Uranus ($\approx 14.5~M_{\Earth}$) suggest that past gaseous circumplanetary disks may have co-existed with solids around sub-Neptune-mass protoplanets ($<…