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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…
Two fundamentally different processes of rocky planet formation exist, but it is unclear which one built the terrestrial planets of the solar system. Either they formed by collisions among planetary embryos from the inner solar system, or…
Exoplanets around different types of stars provide a window into the diverse environments in which planets form. This chapter describes the observed relations between exoplanet populations and stellar properties and how they connect to…
The current picture of terrestrial planet formation relies heavily on our understanding of the dynamical evolution of planetesimals -- asteroid-like bodies thought to be planetary building blocks. In this study we investigate the growth of…
The study of exoplanetary atmospheres is one of the most exciting and dynamic frontiers in astronomy. Over the past two decades ongoing surveys have revealed an astonishing diversity in the planetary masses, radii, temperatures, orbital…
Protoplanetary disks are thought to be the birth places of planetary systems. The formation and the subsequent evolution of protoplanetary disks are regulated by the star formation process, which begins with the collapse of a cloud core to…
What kind of environment may exist on terrestrial planets around other stars? In spite of the lack of direct observations, it may not be premature to speculate on exoplanetary climates, for instance to optimize future telescopic…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
Understanding how giant and terrestrial planets form and evolve, what is their internal structure and that of their atmosphere, represents one of the major challenges of modern astronomy, which is directly connected to the ultimate search…
Interactions between magma oceans and overlying atmospheres on young rocky planets leads to an evolving feedback of outgassing, greenhouse forcing, and mantle melt fraction. Previous studies have predominantly focused on the solidification…
During the late stages of giant planet formation, protoplanets are surrounded by a circumplanetary disk and an infalling envelope of gas and dust. For systems with sufficient cooling, material entering the sphere of influence of the planet…
One of the main evolutionary stages of planet formation is the dynamical evolution of planetesimal disks. These disks are thought to evolve through gravitational encounters and physical collisions between single planetesimals. In recent…
The oxidation of rocky planet surfaces and atmospheres, which arises from the twin forces of stellar nucleosynthesis and gravitational differentiation, is a universal process of key importance to habitability and exoplanet biosignature…
Circumstellar disks have long been regarded as windows into planetary systems. The advent of high sensitivity, high resolution imaging in the submillimetre where both the solid and gas components of disks can be detected opens up new…
From wispy gas giants on the verge of disruption to tiny rocky bodies already falling apart, short-period exoplanets pose a severe puzzle to theories of planet formation and orbital evolution. By far most of the planets known beyond the…
The quest for atmospheric spectral signatures that may witness biological activity in exoplanets is focused on rocky planets. The best targets for future, challenging spectroscopic observations will be selected among potentially habitable…
As of today over 40 planetary systems have been discovered in binary star systems. In all cases the configuration appears to be circumstellar, where the planets orbit around one of the stars, the secondary acting as a perturber. The…
Recent three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamical simulations have identified a disk wind by which gas materials are lost from the surface of a protoplanetary disk, which can significantly alter the evolution of the inner disk and the…
Water and land surfaces on a planet interact with gases in the atmosphere and with radiation from the star. These interactions define the environments that prevail on the planet, some of which may be more amenable to prebiotic chemistry,…
A gap in exoplanets' radius distribution has been widely attributed to the photo-evaporation threshold of their progenitors' gaseous envelope. Giant impacts can also lead to substantial mass-loss. The outflowing gas endures tidal torque…