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The most puzzling property of the extrasolar planets discovered by recent radial velocity surveys is their high orbital eccentricities, which are very difficult to explain within our current theoretical paradigm for planet formation.…
Planets that form around stars born in dense stellar environments are subject to dynamical perturbations from other stars in the system. These perturbations will strip outer planets, forming a population of free-floating planets, some of…
Instabilities in planetary systems can result in the ejection of planets from their host system, resulting in free-floating planets (FFPs). If this occurs in a star cluster, the FFP may remain bound to the star cluster for some time and…
Discoveries of planet- and stellar remnant-hosting pulsars challenge our understanding as the violent supernova explosion that forms the pulsar presumably destabilizes the system. Type II supernova explosions lead to the formation of…
We explore two ways in which objects of planetary masses can form. One is in disk systems like the solar system. The other is in dense clusters where stars and brown dwarfs form. We do not yet have the instrumental accuracy to detect…
The close binary system NN Serpentis must have gone through a common envelope phase before the formation of its white dwarf. During this phase, a substantial amount of mass was lost from the envelope. The recently detected orbits of…
Giant impacts refer to collisions between two objects each of which is massive enough to be considered at least a planetary embryo. The putative collision suffered by the proto-Earth that created the Moon is a prime example, though most…
A viable solution to the origin of close binary systems, unaccounted for in recent theories, is presented. Fragmentation, occurring at the end of the secondary collapse phase (during which molecular hydrogen is dissociating), can form…
As a direct result of ongoing efforts to detect more exoplanetary systems, an ever-increasing number of multiple-planet systems are being announced. But how many of these systems are truly what they seem? In many cases, such systems are…
The occurrence of planets in binary star systems has been investigated via a variety of techniques that sample a wide range of semi-major axes, but with a preponderance of such results applicable to planets with semi-major axes less than a…
It is likely that multiple bodies with masses between those of Mars and Earth ("planetary embryos") formed in the outer planetesimal disk of the solar system. Some of these were likely scattered by the giant planets into orbits with…
Most of massive stars form in binary or higher-order systems in clumpy, sub-structured clusters. In the very first phases of their life, these stars are expected to interact with the surrounding environment, before being released to the…
We investigate how the formation and evolution of extrasolar planetary systems can be affected by stellar encounters that occur in the crowded conditions of a stellar cluster. Using plausible estimates of cluster evolution, we show how…
Many recent observational studies have concluded that planetary systems commonly exist in multiple-star systems. At least ~20%, and presumably a larger fraction of the known extrasolar planetary systems are associated with one or more…
The stars that populate the solar neighbourhood were formed in stellar clusters. Through N-body simulations of these clusters, we measure the rate of close encounters between stars. By monitoring the interaction histories of each star, we…
Our understanding of the process of terrestrial planet formation has grown markedly over the past 20 years, yet key questions remain. This review begins by first addressing the critical, earliest stage of dust coagulation and concentration.…
We examine characteristics of circumbinary orbits in the context of current planet formation scenarios. Analytical perturbation theory predicts the existence of nested circumbinary orbits that are generalizations of circular paths around a…
We report the discovery of two directly imaged, giant planet candidates orbiting the metal-rich DAZ white dwarfs WD 1202-232 and WD 2105-82. JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) data on these two stars show a nearby resolved source at a…
At least 30\% of main sequence stars host planets with sizes of between 1 and 4 Earth radii and orbital periods of less than 100 days. We use N-body simulations including a model for gas-assisted pebble accretion and disk--planet tidal…
Recent observational findings have suggested a positive correlation between the occurrence rates of inner super-Earths and outer giant planets. These results raise the question of whether this trend can be reproduced and explained by planet…