Related papers: Solid-liquid phase change in planetary cores
We use a general circulation model to study the three-dimensional (3-D) flow and temperature distributions of atmospheres on tidally synchronized extrasolar planets. In this work, we focus on the sensitivity of the evolution to the initial…
The Earth is no longer the only known celestial body containing one or more liquid phases. The Cassini spacecraft has discovered seas of hydrocarbons at the surface of Titan, while a series of corroborating evidences argue in favour of the…
As stellar compositions evolve over time in the Milky Way, so will the resulting planet populations. In order to place planet formation in the context of Galactic chemical evolution, we make use of a large ($N = 5\,325$) stellar sample…
Lava planets are rocky exoplanets that orbit so close to their host star that their day-side is hot enough to melt silicate rock. Their short orbital periods ensure that lava planets are tidally locked into synchronous rotation, with…
The crystallization of hard spheres at equilibrium is perhaps the most familiar example of an entropically-driven phase transition. In recent years, it has become clear that activity can dramatically alter this order-disorder transition in…
Ionization drives important chemical and dynamical processes within protoplanetary disks, including the formation of organics and water in the cold midplane and the transportation of material via accretion and magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD)…
We study the steady state resulting from instabilities in crystals driven through a dissipative medium, for instance, a colloidal crystal which is steadily sedimenting through a viscous fluid. The problem involves two coupled fields, the…
Large regions of giant planets are thought to possess unstable thermal gradients stabilised by gradients in heavy-element composition. The fluid can then develop semi-convection, a double-diffusive instability driven by the unequal…
When a fluid with a bulk liquid-vapor critical point is placed inside a static external field with spatial periodic oscillations in one direction, the bulk critical point splits into two new critical points and a triple point. This…
Liquid crystals are phases of matter intermediate between crystals and liquids. Whereas classical liquid crystals have been known for a long time and are used in electro-optical displays, much less is known about their quantum counterparts.…
Rocky planets in our Solar System, namely Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the Moon, which is generally added to this group due to its geological complexity, possess a solid surface and share a common structure divided into major layers,…
While biological crystallization processes have been studied on the microscale extensively, models addressing the mesoscale aspects of such phenomena are rare. In this work, we investigate whether the phase-field theory developed in…
Exoplanets with masses similar to that of Earth have recently been discovered in extrasolar systems. A first order question for understanding their dynamics is to know whether they possess Earth like liquid metallic cores. However, the iron…
Star formation in our Galaxy occurs in molecular clouds that are self-gravitating, highly turbulent, and magnetized. We study the conditions under which cloud cores inherit large-scale magnetic field morphologies and how the field is…
Sub-Neptune planets are a very common type of planets. They are inferred to harbour a primordial (H/He) envelope, on top of a (rocky) core, which dominates the mass. Here, we investigate the long-term consequences of the core properties on…
In many interesting physical settings, such as the vulcanization of rubber, the introduction of permanent random constraints between the constituents of a homogeneous fluid can cause a phase transition to a random solid state. In this…
The formation of protostars and their disks has been understood as the result of the gravitational collapse phase of an accumulation of dense gas that determines the mass reservoir of the star-disk system. Against this background, the…
Cycling of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and interior of rocky planets can stabilize global climate and enable planetary surface temperatures above freezing over geologic time. However, variations in global carbon budget and…
Combining model experiments and theory, we investigate the dense phases of polar active matter beyond the conventional flocking picture. We show that above a critical density flocks assembled from self-propelled colloids arrest their…
The major questions relevant to star and planet formation are: What controls the rate, efficiency, spatial clustering, multiplicity, and initial mass function of star formation, now and in the past? What are the major feedback mechanisms…