Related papers: Exoplanet atmosphere evolution: emulation with neu…
The key to understanding an extrasolar giant planet's spectrum--and hence its detectability and evolution--lies with its atmosphere. Now that direct observations of thermal emission from extrasolar giant planets are in hand, atmosphere…
We constrain the planetary atmospheric mass fraction at the time of the dispersal of the protoplanetary disk and the evolution of the stellar rotation rate for a dozen multi-planet systems that host sub-Neptunes and/or super-Earths. We…
The majority of discovered exoplanetary systems harbour a new class of planets, bodies typically several times more massive than Earth but orbiting their host stars well inside the orbit of Mercury. The origin of these close-in super-Earths…
The study of extrasolar planets has rapidly expanded to encompass the search for new planets, measurements of sizes and masses, models of planetary interiors, planetary demographics and occurrence frequencies, the characterization of…
We report the results of our three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulation of collapsing unmagnetized molecular cloud cores. We investigate the formation and evolution of the circumstellar disk and the clumps formed by disk…
The formation of gas giant planets must occur during the first few Myr of a star's lifetime, when the protoplanetary disc still contains sufficient gas to be accreted onto the planetary core. The majority of protoplanetary discs are exposed…
Detailed characterization of an extrasolar planet's atmosphere provides the best hope for distinguishing the makeup of its outer layers, and the only hope for understanding the interplay between initial composition, chemistry, dynamics &…
Atmospheric escape is an important process that controls the long-term evolution of close-in planets. We perform radiation hydrodynamics simulations of photo-evaporation of exoplanets' atmospheres to study the effect of photoelectric…
The radius-period distribution of exoplanets has been characterized by the \textit{Kepler} survey, and the empirical mass-radius relation by the subset of \textit{Kepler} planets with mass measurements. We combine the two in order to…
Short period planets are subject to intense energetic irradiations from their stars. It has been shown that this can lead to significant atmospheric mass-loss and create smaller mass planets. Here, we analyse whether the evaporation…
We include the effect of evaporation in our evolutionary calculations of close-in giant planets, based on a recent model for thermal evaporation taking into account the XUV flux of the parent star (Lammer et al. 2003). Our analysis leads to…
Atmospheric mass loss plays a major role in the evolution of exoplanets. This process is driven by the stellar high-energy irradiation, especially in the first hundreds of millions of years after dissipation of the proto-planetary disk. A…
Photo-evaporative mass loss sculpts the atmospheric evolution of tightly-orbiting sub-Neptune-mass exoplanets. To date, models of the mass loss from warm Neptunes have assumed that the atmospheric abundances remain constant throughout the…
Atmospheric escape is now considered the major contributing factor in shaping the demographic of detected exoplanets. However, inferences about the exoplanet populations strongly depend on the accuracy of the models. Direct observational…
Protoplanet eccentricities of e >~ H/r can slow or reverse migration, but previous 2D studies have shown that gravitational scattering cannot maintain significant planet eccentricities against disc-induced damping. We simulate the evolution…
Recent detection of exoplanets with Earth-like insolation attracts growing interest in how common Earth-like aqua planets are beyond the solar system. While terrestrial planets are often assumed to capture icy or water-rich planetesimals, a…
Future instruments like NIRCam and MIRI on JWST or METIS at the ELT will be able to image exoplanets that are too faint for current direct imaging instruments. Evolutionary models predicting the planetary intrinsic luminosity as a function…
We present models of giant planet migration in evolving protoplanetary disks. Our disks evolve subject to viscous transport of angular momentum and photoevaporation, while planets undergo Type II migration. We use a Monte Carlo approach,…
We survey the basic principles of atmospheric dynamics relevant to explaining existing and future observations of exoplanets, both gas giant and terrestrial. Given the paucity of data on exoplanet atmospheres, our approach is to emphasize…
Planets with masses larger than about 0.1 Earth-masses undergo rapid inward migration (type I migration) in a standard protoplanetary disk. Recent magnetohydrodynamical simulations revealed the presence of magnetically driven disk winds,…