Related papers: Mercury's formation within the Early Instability S…
The outer giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, pose a challenge to theories of planet formation. They exist in a region of the Solar System where long dynamical timescales and a low primordial density of material would have conspired to make…
The core accretion mechanism is presently the most widely accepted cause of the formation of giant planets. For simplicity, most models presently assume that the growth of planetary embryos occurs in isolation. We explore how the…
Planetary embryos embedded in a gas disc suffer a decay in semimajor axis -- type I migration -- due to the asymmetric torques produced by the interior and exterior wakes raised by the body (Goldreich & Tremaine 1980; Ward 1986). This…
In a recent paper we proposed that the giant planets' primordial orbits may have been eccentric (~0.05), and used a suite of dynamical simulations to show outcomes of the giant planet instability that are consistent with their present-day…
One of the most challenging problems we face in our understanding of planet formation is how Jupiter and Saturn could have formed before the the solar nebula dispersed. The most popular model of giant planet formation is the so-called 'core…
Three major planets, Venus, Earth, and Mercury formed out of the solar nebula. A fourth planetesimal, Theia, also formed near Earth where it collided in a giant impact, rebounding as the planet Mars. During this impact Earth lost…
Building the terrestrial planets has been a challenge for planet formation models. In particular, classical theories have been unable to reproduce the small mass of Mars and instead predict that a planet near 1.5 AU should roughly be the…
Dynamical models of planet formation coupled with cosmochemical data from martian meteorites show that Mars' isotopic composition is distinct from that of Earth. Reconciliation of formation models with meteorite data require that Mars grew…
The large scale structure of the Solar System has been shaped by a transient dynamical instability that may have been triggered by the interaction of the giants planets with a massive primordial disk of icy debris. In this work, we…
The Solar System's orbital structure is thought to have been sculpted by an episode of dynamical instability among the giant planets. However, the instability trigger and timing have not been clearly established. Hydrodynamical modeling has…
The dynamical evolution of terrestrial planets resembling Mercury in the vicinity of spin-orbit resonances is investigated using comprehensive harmonic expansions of the tidal torque taking into account the frequency-dependent quality…
The origin of Mercury's high iron-to-rock ratio is still unknown. In this work we investigate Mercury's formation via giant impacts and consider the possibilities of a single giant impact, a hit-and-run, and multiple collisions in one…
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,…
In this work, we extensively investigate the formation of near 4:2:1 mean motion resonances (MMRs) configuration by performing two sets of N-body simulations. We model the eccentricity damping, gas drag, type I and type II planetary…
The rotation of Mercury is presently captured in a 3/2 spin-orbit resonance with the orbital mean motion. The capture mechanism is well understood as the result of tidal interactions with the Sun combined with planetary perturbations.…
Mercury has an unusually large metal core comprising ~70% of its mass comparing to all other terrestrial planets in the solar system. Giant impacts can remove a significant fraction of the silicate mantle of a chondritic proto-Mercury and…
We carry out a series of high resolution ($1024\times 1024$) hydrodynamical simulations to investigate the orbital evolution of Jupiter and Saturn embedded in a gaseous protostellar disk. Our work extends the results in the classical papers…
Planet formation simulations consistently predict compact systems of numerous small planets in chains of mean motion resonances formed by planet-disk interaction, but transiting planet surveys have found most systems to be non-resonant and…
The final stage of planet formation is dominated by collisions between planetary embryos. The dynamics of this stage determine the orbital configuration and the mass and composition of planets in the system. In the solar system, late giant…
Recent exoplanet surveys revealed that for solar-type stars, close-in Super-Earths are ubiquitous and many of them are in multi-planet systems. These systems are more compact than the Solar System's terrestrial planets. However, there have…