Related papers: Reassessing the origin and evolution of Ecliptic C…

Context: More than 50 exoplanets have been found around giant stars, revealing different properties when compared to planets orbiting solar-type stars. In particular, they are Super-Jupiters and are not found orbiting interior to $\sim$ 0.5…

Planet formation occurs around a wide range of stellar masses and stellar system architectures. An improved understanding of the formation process can be achieved by studying it across the full parameter space, particularly toward the…

Recently, the Kepler spacecraft has detected a sizable aggregate of objects, characterized by giant-planet-like radii and modest levels of stellar irradiation. With the exception of a handful of objects, the physical nature, and…

The origin of the orbital structure of the cold component of the Kuiper belt is still a hot subject of investigation. Several features of the solar system suggest that the giant planets underwent a phase of global dynamical instability, but…

The Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) exhibit an orbital clustering of the outer planets lying at perihelion distances larger than Neptune and semimajor axes greater than 150 AU from the Sun. This implies a hitherto unknown dynamical mechanism to…

We use astrometry of Pluto and other TNOs to constrain the sky location, distance, and mass of the possible additional planet (Planet Nine) hypothesized by Batygin and Brown (2016). We find that over broad regions of the sky, the inclusion…

Exoplanets number in their thousands, and the number is ever increasing with the advent of new surveys and improved instrumentation. One of the most surprising things we have learnt from these discoveries is not that small-rocky planets in…

Transit surveys have revealed a significant population of compact multi-planet systems, containing several sub-Neptune-mass planets on close-in, tightly-packed orbits. These systems are thought to have formed through a final phase of giant…

Following the suggestion of Black (1997) that some massive extrasolar planets may be associated with the tail of the distribution of stellar companions, we investigate a scenario in which 5 < N < 100 planetary mass objects are assumed to…

The majority of discovered exoplanetary systems harbour a new class of planets, bodies typically several times more massive than Earth but orbiting their host stars well inside the orbit of Mercury. The origin of these close-in super-Earths…

Planets intermediate in size between the Earth and Neptune, and orbiting closer to their host stars than Mercury does the Sun, are the most common type of planet revealed by exoplanet surveys over the last quarter century. Results from…

A recent proposal for the detection of a hypothetical gravitating body 500 AU from the Sun (termed Planet 9) calls for a fleet of near-relativistic spacecraft, equipped with high-precision clocks, to be sent to a region where the object is…

Using numerical simulations, we examine the structure of a cometary population near a massive planet, such as a giant planet of the Solar system, starting with one-planet approximation (the Sun plus one planet). By studying the…

The connection between inner small planets and outer giant planets is crucial to our understanding of planet formation across a wide range of orbital separations. While Kepler provided a plethora of compact multi-planet systems at short…

The discovery of Jupiter-mass planets in close orbits about their parent stars has challenged models of planet formation. Recent observations have shown that a number of these planets have highly inclined, sometimes retrograde orbits about…

The composition of giant planets' atmospheres is an important tracer of their formation history. While many theoretical studies investigate the heavy-element accretion within a gaseous protoplanetary disk, the possibility of solid accretion…

The apparent regularity of the motion of the giant planets of our solar system suggested for decades that said planets formed onto orbits similar to the current ones and that nothing dramatic ever happened during their lifetime. The…

We investigate the possible origins of real high-inclination Centaurs and trans-neptunian objects using a high-resolution statistical search for stable orbits that simulates their evolution back in time to the epoch when planet formation…

Despite the discovery of thousands of exoplanets in recent years, the number of known exoplanets in star clusters remains tiny. This may be a consequence of close stellar encounters perturbing the dynamical evolution of planetary systems in…

Planets with masses between 0.1 - 10 M_earth are believed to host dense atmospheres. These atmospheres can play an important role on the planet's spin evolution, since thermal atmospheric tides, driven by the host star, may counterbalance…