Related papers: Oort cloud (exo)planets
A large fraction of stars are formed in dense clusters. In the cluster, close encounters between stars at distances less than 100 au are common. It has been shown that during close encounters planets can transfer between stars. Such…
In recent years, evidence has been obtained that in the outer region of the Solar System (in the inner part of the Oort cloud), at a distance $\sim300-700$ AU from the Sun, there may be a captured planet or a primordial black hole. In this…
It is thought that, sometime after their formation, the solar system's giant planets experienced a dynamical instability that caused their orbits to excite, diverge, and ejected one or more objects with masses comparable to the ice giants.…
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…
The dynamical structure of the Solar System can be explained by a period of orbital instability experienced by the giant planets. While a late instability was originally proposed to explain the Late Heavy Bombardment, recent work favors an…
Most stars, perhaps even all stars, form in crowded stellar environments. Such star forming regions typically dissolve within ten million years, while others remain bound as stellar groupings for hundreds of millions to billions of years,…
Planet-planet scattering is the leading mechanism to explain the broad eccentricity distribution of observed giant exoplanets. Here we study the orbital stability of primordial giant planet moons in this scenario. We use N-body simulations…
As gas giant planets evolve, they may scatter other planets far from their original orbits to produce hot Jupiters or rogue planets that are not gravitationally bound to any star. Here, we consider planets cast out to large orbital…
Many dynamical aspects of the solar system can be explained by the outer planets experiencing a period of orbital instability sometimes called the Nice Model. Though often correlated with a perceived delayed spike in the lunar cratering…
Circumstantial evidence suggests that most known extra-solar planetary systems are survivors of violent dynamical instabilities. Here we explore how giant planet instabilities affect the formation and survival of terrestrial planets. We…
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…
Several properties of the Solar System, including the wide radial spacing and orbital eccentricities of giant planets, can be explained if the early Solar System evolved through a dynamical instability followed by migration of planets in…
Although current sensitivity limits are such that true Solar System analogs remain challenging to detect, numerous planetary systems have been discovered that are very different from our own Solar System. The majority of systems harbor a…
Thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets have been identified in recent years. Consequently, theoretical research on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems has seen a boost, and the processes of planet-planet…
This paper explores the intermediate-time dynamics of newly formed solar systems with a focus on possible mechanisms for planetary migration. We consider two limiting corners of the available parameter space -- crowded systems containing…
We perform a simulation using the Astrophysical Multipurpose Software Environment of the Orion Trapezium star cluster in which the evolution of the stars and the dynamics of planetary systems are taken into account. The initial conditions…
Excess emission, associated with warm, dust belts, commonly known as exozodis, has been observed around a third of nearby stars. The high levels of dust required to explain the observations are not generally consistent with steady-state…
We present a statistical study of the post-formation migration of giant planets in a range of initial disk conditions. For given initial conditions we model the evolution of giant planet orbits under the influence of disk, stellar, and mass…
Observations of the population of cold Jupiter planets ($r>$1 AU) show that nearly all of these planets orbit their host star on eccentric orbits. For planets up to a few Jupiter masses, eccentric orbits are thought to be the outcome of…
Star-forming disk galaxies at high redshift are often subject to violent disk instability, characterized by giant clumps whose fate is yet to be understood. The main question is whether the clumps disrupt within their dynamical timescale…