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Habitability is usually defined as the requirement for a terrestrial planet's atmosphere to sustain liquid water. This definition can be complemented by the dynamical requirement that other planets in the system do not gravitationally…
Deep elemental composition is a challenging measurement to achieve in the giant planets of the solar system. Yet, knowledge of the deep composition offers important insights in the internal structure of these planets, their evolutionary…
In protoplanetary disks, small mm-cm-sized pebbles drift inwards which can aid planetary growth and influence the chemical composition of their natal disks. Gaps in protoplanetary disks can hinder the effective inward transport of pebbles…
The ubiquity of M dwarfs, combined with the relative ease of detecting terrestrial-mass planets around them, has made them prime targets for finding and characterising planets in the "Habitable Zone" (HZ). However, Kepler finds that…
Silicon and Mg in differentiated rocky bodies exhibit heavy isotope enrichments that have been attributed to evaporation of partially or entirely molten planetesimals. We evaluate the mechanisms of planetesimal evaporation in the early…
We present 230 realizations of a numerical model of planet formation in systems without gas giants. These represent a scenario in which protoplanets grow in a region of a circumstellar disk where water ice condenses (the "ice line''), but…
Tidally locked lava planets are hot, rocky worlds on close-in orbits with a permanent molten dayside. With JWST, their surfaces and atmospheres are beginning to be revealed. This work investigates 3D magma-ocean dynamics, derives scaling…
The magma ocean concept was first conceived to explain the geology of the Moon, but hemispherical or global oceans of silicate melt could be a widespread "lava world" phase of rocky planet accretion, and could persist on planets on…
Low mass stars might offer today the best opportunities to detect and characterise planetary systems, especially those harbouring close-in low mass temperate planets. Among those stars, TRAPPIST-1 is exceptional since it has seven…
In the past decade, observations from space and ground have found H$_2$O to be the most abundant molecular species, after hydrogen, in the atmospheres of hot, gaseous, extrasolar planets. Being the main molecular carrier of oxygen, H$_2$O…
After publication of our initial mass-radius-composition models for the TRAPPIST-1 system in Unterborn et al. (2018), the planet masses were updated in Grimm et al. (2018). We had originally adopted the data set of Wang et al., 2017 who…
A magma ocean is expected to exist on the dayside of tide-locked planets if surface temperature exceeds the melting temperature of typical crust. As highly prioritized targets for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), more information…
Many planets in the solar system and across the galaxy have hydrogen-rich atmospheres overlying more heavy element-rich interiors with which they interact for billions of years. Atmosphere-interior interactions are thus crucial to…
A terrestrial planet is molten during formation and may remain so if subject to intense insolation or tidal forces. Observations continue to favour the detection and characterisation of hot planets, potentially with large outgassed…
Planets with masses between Earth and Neptune often have radii that imply the presence of volatiles, suggesting that water may be abundant in their interiors. However, directly observing the precise water mass fraction and water…
It has been suggested that Earth's present water budget formed from oxidation reactions between its initial hydrogen-rich primordial atmosphere and its magma ocean. Here we examine this hypothesis by building a comprehensive…
Habitability is a measure of an environment's potential to support life, and a habitable exoplanet supports liquid water on its surface. However, a planet's success in maintaining liquid water on its surface is the end result of a complex…
We review the general theoretical concepts and observational constraints on the distribution and evolution of water vapor and ice in protoplanetary disks, with a focus on the Solar System. Water is expected to freeze out at distances…
The hydrodynamic exchange of a protoplanet's envelope material with the background protoplanetary disk has been proposed as one mechanism to account for the diversity of observed planet envelopes which range in mass fractions of ~1% for…
A major goal in the search for extraterrestrial life is the detection of liquid water on the surface of exoplanets. On terrestrial planets, volcanic outgassing is a significant source of atmospheric and surface water and a major contributor…