Related papers: An Observational View of Structure in Protostellar…
Protoplanetary disks are the birthplaces of planetary systems. The evolution of the star-disk system and the disk chemical composition determines the initial conditions for planet formation. Therefore a comprehensive understanding of the…
The spatial distribution and lifetime of molecular gas in the inner regions of young circumstellar disks are key to understanding the formation of planetary systems. Gas-rich disks are observed to disperse in the first ~10 Myr, and recent…
It is expected that an average protostar will undergo at least one impulsive interaction with a neighbouring protostar whilst a large fraction of its mass is still in a massive, extended disc. Such interactions must have a significant…
Abridged: We use three-dimensional SPH simulations to investigate the collapse of low-mass prestellar cores and the formation and early evolution of protostellar discs. The initial conditions are slightly supercritical Bonnor-Ebert spheres…
The transfer of circumstellar disk mass and momentum onto the protostar and out into the environment occurs via a variety of mechanisms including magnetospheric accretion, jets, outflows, and disk winds. The interplay of these processes…
The near-star environment around young stars is very dynamic with winds, disks, and outflows. These processes are involved in star and planet formation, and influence the formation and habitability of planets around host stars. Even for the…
Magnetic stresses collimate protostellar winds into a common distribution of force with angle. Sweeping into the ambient medium, such winds drive bipolar molecular outflows whose properties are insensitive to the distribution of ambient gas…
[Abridged] Star and planet formation are the complex outcomes of gravitational collapse and angular momentum transport mediated by protostellar and protoplanetary disks. In this review we focus on the role of gravitational instability in…
Extinction maps at 8 micron from the Spitzer Space Telescope show that many Class 0 protostars exhibit complex, irregular, and on-axisymmetric structure within the densest regions of their dusty envelopes. Many of the systems have highly…
All measurements of cosmic star formation must assume an initial distribution of stellar masses -- the stellar initial mass function -- in order to extrapolate from the star-formation rate measured for typically rare, massive stars (> 8…
Annular structures in proto-planetary discs, such as gaps and rings, are now ubiquitously found by high-resolution ALMA observations. Under the hypothesis that they are opened by planets, in this paper we investigate how the minimum planet…
Understanding the formation mechanisms of protoplanetary disks and multiple systems, and their pristine properties, is a key question for modern astrophysics. The properties of the youngest disks, embedded in rotating infalling protostellar…
Many protostellar disks show central cavities, rings, or spiral arms likely caused by low-mass stellar or planetary companions, yet few such features are conclusively tied to bodies embedded in the disks. We note that even small features on…
The number of stars that are known to have debris disks is greater than that of stars known to harbour planets. These disks are detected because dust is created in the destruction of planetesimals in the disks much in the same way that dust…
The evolution of circumstellar discs is influenced by their surroundings. The relevant processes include external photoevaporation due to nearby stars, and dynamical truncations. The impact of these processes on disc populations depends on…
Dust grains with sizes around (sub)mm are expected to couple only weakly to the gas motion in regions beyond 10 au of circumstellar disks. In this work, we investigate the influence of the spatial distribution of such grains on the (sub)mm…
The statistical properties of circumstellar disks around young stars are important for constraining theoretical models for the formation and early evolution of planetary systems. In this brief review, I survey the literature related to…
Stellar binaries represent a substantial fraction of stellar systems, especially among young stellar objects. Accordingly, binaries play an important role in setting the architecture of a large number of protoplanetary discs. Binaries in…
Brown dwarfs and very low mass stars are a significant fraction of stars in our galaxy, and they are interesting laboratories to investigate planet formation in extreme conditions of low temperature and densities. In addition, the dust…
The development of perturbations in the circumstellar disks of pre-main-sequence stars caused by clumpy accretion was investigated. Here we perform 3D hydrodynamical smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of disks perturbed by a recent…