Related papers: Interstellar planetesimals: potential seeds for pl…
Planetesimals form in gas-rich protoplanetary disks around young stars. However, protoplanetary disks fade in about 10 Myr. The planetesimals (and also many of the planets) left behind are too dim to study directly. Fortunately, collisions…
Hundreds of circumstellar disks in the Orion nebula are being rapidly destroyed by the intense ultraviolet radiation produced by nearby bright stars. These young, million-year-old disks may not survive long enough to form planetary systems.…
Most stars form in compact, dense embedded clusters with memberships ranging from a dozen stars to many millions of stars. Embedded clusters containing more than a few hundred stars also contain O stars that disrupt the nebula abruptly.…
Millimeter interferometry provides evidence for the presence of mm to cm size "pebbles" in the outer parts of disks around pre-main-sequence stars. The observations suggest that large grains are produced relatively early in disk evolution…
The discovery of the intact minor planet embedded in the debris disc orbiting SDSS J1228+1040 raises questions about the dynamical history of the system. Further, the recent passage of the potentially interstellar object 1I/'Oumuamua within…
Protostellar disks are a ubiquitous part of the star formation process and the future sites of planet formation. As part of the Early Planet Formation in Embedded Disks (eDisk) large program, we present high-angular resolution dust…
The closest examples of high-mass star birth occurs in deeply embedded environments at kiloparsec distances. Although much progress has been made, an observationally validated picture of the dominant processes which allows the central…
Low-mass, metal-enriched stars were likely present as early as cosmic dawn. In this work, we investigate whether these stars could have hosted planets in their protoplanetary disks. If so, these would have been the first planets to form in…
Planet formation around young stars requires the growth of interstellar dust grains from mm-sized particles to km-sized planetesimals. Numerical simulations have shown that large ($\sim$mm-sized) grains found in the inner envelope of young…
Asteroid 1I/'Oumuamua is the first observed interstellar object. Its light-curve amplitude indicates that the object is highly elongated with an axis ratio of at least 5:1. The absence of such elongated asteroids in the Solar system, as…
A debris disk is a constituent of any planetary system surrounding a main sequence star. We study whether close stellar encounters can disrupt and strip a debris disk of its planetesimals in the expanding open cluster of its birth with a…
In the core-accretion model, gas-giant planets form solid cores which then accrete gaseous envelopes. Tidal interactions with disk gas cause a core to undergo inward type-I migration in 10^4 to 10^5 years. Cores must form faster than this…
Dwarf stars are believed to have small protostar disk where planets may grow up. During the planet formation stage, embryos undergoing type I migration are expected to be stalled at inner edge of magnetic inactive disk ($a_{\rm crit} \sim…
Two basic routes for planetesimal formation have been proposed over the last few decades. One is a classical "slow-growth" scenario. Another one is particle concentration models, in which small pebbles are concentrated locally and then…
How and when in the star formation sequence do dust grains start to grow into pebbles is a cornerstone question to both star and planet formation. We compute the polarized radiative transfer from a model solar-type protostellar core, using…
Our current understanding of interstellar dust is summarized at an introductory level. Submicron-sized interstellar dust grains absorb and scatter light, and reradiate the absorbed energy in the infrared. The grain population spans a range…
Determining the heavy-element accretion rate of growing giant planets is crucial for understanding their formation and bulk composition. The solid (heavy-element) accretion rate should be carefully modeled during the various stages of giant…
Dust collisions in protoplanetary disks are one means to grow planetesimals, but the destructive or constructive nature of high speed collisions is still unsettled. In laboratory experiments, we study the self-consistent evolution of a…
Since giant planets scatter planetesimals within a few tidal radii of their orbits, the locations of existing planetesimal belts indicate regions where giant planet formation failed in bygone protostellar disks. Infrared observations of…
Light curve observations of a recently discovered interstellar object 1I/`Oumuamua suggest that this object has an extremely elongated shape with the axis ratio 0.3 or smaller. Planetesimal collisions can produce irregular shapes including…