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The standard formation model of close-in low-mass planets involves efficient inward migration followed by growth through giant impacts after the protoplanetary gas disk disperses. While detailed N-body simulations have enhanced our…
Modern studies of the early solar system routinely invoke the possibility of an orbital instability among the giant planets triggered by gravitational interactions between the planets and a massive exterior disk of planetesimals. Previous…
Probabilities of collisions of migrating small bodies and dust particles produced by these bodies with planets were studied. Various Jupiter-family comets, Halley-type comets, long-period comets, trans-Neptunian objects, and asteroids were…
The four longest period Kuiper belt objects have orbital periods close to integer ratios with each other. A hypothetical planet with orbital period $\sim$17,117 years, semimajor axis $\sim$665 AU, would have N/1 and N/2 period ratios with…
We extend previous results showing that the surfaces of Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt objects are not primordial and have been moderately to heavily reworked by collisions. Objects smaller than about $r = 2.5$ km have collisional disruption…
Comets and small Kuiper belt objects are considered to be among the most primitive objects in the solar system as comets like C/1995 O1 Hale-Bopp are rich in highly volatile ices like CO. It has been suggested that early in the solar system…
We provide a fast method for computing constraints on impactor pre-impact orbits, applying this to the late giant impacts in the Solar System. These constraints can be used to make quick, broad comparisons of different collision scenarios,…
The origin of Mercury still remains poorly understood compared to the other rocky planets of the Solar System. One of the most relevant constraints that any formation model has to fulfill refers to its internal structure, with a predominant…
In the standard model of terrestrial planet formation, planets are formed through giant impacts of planetary embryos after the dispersal of the protoplanetary gas disc. Traditionally, $N$-body simulations have been used to investigate this…
Short-period super-Earths and mini-Neptunes encircle more than $\sim50\%$ of Sun-like stars and are relatively amenable to direct observational characterization. Despite this, environments in which these planets accrete are difficult to…
Global scale impacts modify the physical or thermal state of a substantial fraction of a target asteroid. Specific effects include accretion, family formation, reshaping, mixing and layering, shock and frictional heating, fragmentation,…
Planet--Planet scattering is an efficient and robust dynamical mechanism for producing eccentric exoplanets. Coupled to tidal interactions with the central star, it can also explain close--in giant planets on circularized and potentially…
The Solar system beyond Neptune is believed to house a population of small primordial bodies left over from the planet formation process. The region up to heliocentric distance $\sim 50 AU$ (a.k.a. the Kuiper Belt) may be the source of the…
We present a new, simple, fast algorithm to numerically evolve disks of inelastically colliding particles surrounding a central star. Our algorithm adds negligible computational cost to the fastest existing collisionless N-body codes, and…
We study orbital evolution of multi-planet systems with masses in the terrestrial planet regime induced through tidal interaction with a protoplanetary disk assuming that this is the dominant mechanism for producing orbital migration and…
The recent discovery of free-floating planets and their theoretical interpretation as celestial bodies, either condensed independently or ejected from parent stars in tight clusters, introduced an intriguing possibility. Namely, that some…
Most planetary systems -- including our own -- are born within stellar clusters, where interactions with neighboring stars can help shape the system architecture. This paper develops an orbit-averaged formalism to characterize the cluster's…
Planetesimal formation likely lasted for millions of years in the solar nebula, and the cold classicals in the Kuiper Belt are suggested to be the direct products of streaming instability. The presence of minor planetary bodies in the outer…
We investigated the underlying architecture of planetary systems by deriving the distribution of planet multiplicity (number of planets) and the distribution of orbital inclinations based on the sample of planet candidates discovered by the…
In this work we explore a new dynamical path for the delivery of low-inclination comets. In a configuration formed by an interior giant planet and an exterior massive debris disk, where the mass is accounted for by the 50 largest objects in…