Related papers: Born eccentric: constraints on Jupiter and Saturn'…
The asteroid belt is characterized by an extreme low total mass of material on dynamically excited orbits. The Nice Model explains many peculiar qualities of the solar system, including the belt's excited state, by invoking an orbital…
The Sun's equator and the planets' orbital planes are nearly aligned, which is presumably a consequence of their formation from a single spinning gaseous disk. For exoplanetary systems this well-aligned configuration is not guaranteed:…
The hundreds of exoplanets that have been discovered in the past two decades offer a new perspective on planetary structure. Instead of being the archetypal examples of planets, those of our Solar System are merely possible outcomes of…
The Juno mission has provided an accurate determination of Jupiter's gravitational field, which has been used to obtain information about the planet's composition and internal structure. Several models of Jupiter's structure that fit the…
Due to the chaotic nature of the Solar System, the question of its dynamic long-term stability can only be answered in a statistical sense, e.g. based on numerical ensemble integrations of nearby orbits. Destabilization, including…
Giant planets acquire gas, ices and rocks during the early formation stages of planetary systems and thus inform us on the formation process itself. Proceeding from inside out, examining the connections between the deep interiors and the…
The evolution of a system consisting of a protoplanetary disc with two embedded Jupiter sized planets is studied numerically. The disc is assumed to be flat and non-self gravitating, which is modeled by the planar (two-dimensional)…
The discovery of hot Jupiters has challenged the classical planet formation theory. Although various formation mechanisms have been proposed, the dominant channel and relative contributions remain unclear. Furthermore, hot Jupiters offer a…
Evidence in the Solar System suggests that the giant planets underwent an epoch of radial migration that was very rapid, with an e-folding timescale shorter than 1~Myr. It is probable that the cause of this migration was that the giant…
We investigate the possible origins of real high-inclination Centaurs and trans-neptunian objects using a high-resolution statistical search for stable orbits that simulates their evolution back in time to the epoch when planet formation…
We analyse how drag forces modify the orbits of objects moving through extended gaseous distributions. We consider how hydrodynamic (surface area) drag forces and dynamical friction (gravitational) drag forces drive the evolution of orbital…
Jupiter and Saturn formed in a few million years (Haisch et al. 2001) from a gas-dominated protoplanetary disk, and were susceptible to gas-driven migration of their orbits on timescales of only ~100,000 years (Armitage 2007). Hydrodynamic…
Among the numerous discoveries resulting from the {\it Kepler} mission are a plethora of compact planetary systems that provide deep insights into planet formation theories. The architecture of such compact systems also produces unique…
The Jupiter-Saturn 2:5 near-commensurability is analyzed in a fully analytic Hamiltonian planetary theory. Computations for the Sun-Jupiter-Saturn system, extending to the third order of the masses and to the 8th degree in the…
As gas giant planets evolve, they may scatter other planets far from their original orbits to produce hot Jupiters or rogue planets that are not gravitationally bound to any star. Here, we consider planets cast out to large orbital…
We explore the role of dynamics in shaping planetary system multiplicities, focussing on two particular problems. (1) We propose that the lack of close-in super-Earths in hot Jupiter systems is a signature of the migration history of the…
The long-term habitability of Earth-like planets requires low orbital eccentricities. A secular perturbation from a distant stellar companion is a very important mechanism in exciting planetary eccentricities, as many of the extrasolar…
While Jupiter's massive gas envelope consists mainly of hydrogen and helium, the key to understanding Jupiter's formation and evolution lies in the distribution of the remaining (heavy) elements. Before the Juno mission, the lack of…
In the past two decades, transit surveys have revealed a class of planets with thick atmospheres -- sub-Neptunes -- that must have completed their accretion in protoplanet disks. When planets form in the gaseous disk, the gravitational…
Observations of exoplanets have revealed that systems with planets on closely-spaced orbits are common, which motivates the question "How closely can planets orbit to one another and still be dynamically-stable for very long times?". To…