Related papers: A wide-orbit giant planet in the high-mass b Centa…
Small planets ($R_{p} \leq 4 R_{\oplus}$) are divided into rocky super-Earths and gaseous sub-Neptunes separated by a radius gap, but the mechanisms that produce these distinct planet populations remain unclear. Binary stars are the only…
Close-in giant planets are thought to have formed in the cold outer regions of planetary systems and migrated inward, passing through the orbital parameter space occupied by the terrestrial planets in our own Solar System. We present…
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…
Planet formation in small-separation (~20 AU) eccentric binaries such as gamma Cephei or alpha Centauri is believed to be adversely affected by the presence of the stellar companion. Strong dynamical excitation of planetesimals by the…
The exploration of carbon-to-oxygen ratios has yielded intriguing insights into the composition of close-in giant exoplanets, giving rise to a distinct classification: carbon-rich planets, characterized by a carbon-to-oxygen ratio $\ge$ 1…
Centaurs are minor planets orbiting between Jupiter and Neptune that have or had crossing orbits with one or more giant planets. Recent observations and reinterpretation of previous observations have revealed the existence of ring systems…
We suggest that planets, brown dwarfs, and even low mass stars can be formed by fragmentation of protoplanetary disks around very massive stars M>~100 solar masses. We discuss how fragmentation conditions make the formation of very massive…
Planets form in the circumstellar disks of young stars. We review the basic physical processes by which solid bodies accrete each other and alter each others' random velocities, and we provide order-of-magnitude derivations for the rates of…
Observations in the past decade have revealed extrasolar planets with a wide range of orbital semimajor axes and eccentricities. Based on the present understanding of planet formation via core accretion and oligarchic growth, we expect that…
We investigate the formation of discs within binary systems where at least one component has left the main sequence. In particular we calculate the occurrence rates of systems which can host long-lived, massive discs that may be able to…
The giant planets of the solar system likely played a large role in shaping the architecture of the terrestrial planets. Using an updated collision model, we conduct a suite of high resolution N-body integrations to probe the relationship…
We develop a semi-analytic model for planet formation during the pre-main sequence contraction phase of a low mass star. During this evolution, the stellar magnetosphere maintains a fixed ratio between the inner disk radius and the stellar…
Context: Pebble accretion is expected to be the dominant process for the formation of massive solid planets, such as the cores of giant planets and super-Earths. So, far, this process has been studied under the assumption that dust…
It is well accepted that 'hot Jupiters' did not form in situ, as the temperature in the protoplanetary disc at the radius at which they now orbit would have been too high for planet formation to have occurred. These planets, instead, form…
Recent discoveries of extrasolar planets at small orbital radii, or with significant eccentricities, indicate that interactions between massive planets and the disks of gas and dust from which they formed are vital for determining the final…
Exoplanet occurrence rates facilitate comparisons between observations of planets and theoretical models of planet formation. Despite their deductive power, exoplanet occurrence rates for half the stars in the sky are missing because…
Most stars are in multiple systems, with the majority of those being binaries. A large number of planets have been confirmed in binary stars and therefore it is important to understand their formation and dynamical evolution. We perform…
Five planets are presently believed to orbit the primary star of 55 Cnc, but there exists a large 5 AU gap in their distribution between the two outermost planets. This gap has attracted considerable interest because it may contain one or…
Correlations between stellar properties and the occurrence rate of exoplanets can be used to inform the target selection of future planet search efforts and provide valuable clues about the planet formation process. We analyze a sample of…
Recent radial velocity and transit data discovered $\sim 100$ planets in binary or triple stellar systems out of the entire population of a few thousand known planets. Stellar companions are expected to strongly influence both the formation…