Related papers: Differentiating Formation Models with New Dynamica…
We present high resolution millimeter continuum imaging of the disc surrounding the young star CI Tau, a system hosting the first hot Jupiter candidate in a protoplanetary disc system. The system has extended mm emission on which are…
Assuming that giant planets are formed in thin protoplanetary discs, a '3D' system can form, provided that the mutual inclination is excited by some dynamical mechanism. Resonant interactions and close planetary encounters are thought to be…
Planet formation remains a fundamentally important yet poorly understood process. Protoplanetary disks, the birthplaces of planetary systems, exhibit a wide range of substructures that are increasingly interpreted as signatures of…
Planet formation is a hugely dynamic process requiring the transport, concentration and assimilation of gas and dust to form the first planetesimals and cores. With access to extremely high spatial and spectral resolution observations at…
Firstly, we study the final masses of giant planets growing in protoplanetary disks through capture of disk gas, by employing an empirical formula for the gas capture rate and a shallow disk gap model, which are both based on hydrodynamical…
We describe comprehensive calculations of the formation of icy planets and debris disks at 30-150 AU around 1-3 solar mass stars. Disks composed of large, strong planetesimals produce more massive planets than disks composed of small, weak…
In the coming years, high contrast imaging surveys are expected to reveal the characteristics of the population of wide-orbit, massive, exoplanets. To date, a handful of wide planetary mass companions are known, but only one such…
Young and directly imaged exoplanets offer critical tests of planet-formation models that are not matched by RV surveys of mature stars. These targets have been extremely elusive to date, with no exoplanets younger than 10--20 Myr and only…
The increasing number of newly detected exoplanets at short orbital periods raises questions about their formation and migration histories. A particular puzzle that requires explanation arises from one of the key results of the Kepler…
We examine changes in the molecular abundances resulting from increased heating due to a self-luminous planetary companion embedded within a narrow circumstellar disk gap. Using 3D models that include stellar and planetary irradiation, we…
[abridged] We have assembled a database of stars having both masses determined from measured orbital dynamics and sufficient spectral and photometric information for their placement on a theoretical HR diagram. Our sample consists of 115…
PDS 70 hosts two massive, still-accreting planets and the inclined orientation of its protoplanetary disk presents a unique opportunity to directly probe the vertical gas structure of a planet-hosting disk. Here, we use…
Detection of Jupiter mass companions to nearby solar type stars with precise radial velocity measurements is now routine, and Doppler surveys are moving towards lower velocity amplitudes. The detection of several Neptune-mass planets with…
Over the last years, large (sub-)millimetre surveys of protoplanetary disks have well constrained the demographics of disks, such as their millimetre luminosities, spectral indices, and disk radii. Additionally, several high-resolution…
We present a high angular resolution (0.3" = 40 AU) SMA survey of the 870 micron thermal continuum emission from 9 of the brightest, and therefore most massive, circumstellar disks in the ~1 Myr-old Ophiuchus star-forming region. Using 2-D…
Recent observations of protoplanets embedded in circumstellar disks have shed light on the planet formation process. In particular, detection of hydrogen Balmer-line (H{\alpha}) emission gives direct constraints on late-stage accretion onto…
Intermediate mass planets, from Super-Earth to Neptune-sized bodies, are the most common type of planets in the galaxy. The prevailing theory of planet formation, core-accretion, predicts significantly fewer intermediate-mass giant planets…
Recent observations point to the presence of structured dust grains in the discs surrounding young brown dwarfs, thus implying that the first stages of planet formation take place also in the sub-stellar regime. Here, we investigate the…
We report on Keck Interferometer observations of the double-lined binary (B) component of the quadruple pre-main sequence (PMS) system HD 98800. With these interferometric observations combined with astrometric measurements made by the…
GJ676A is an M0 dwarf hosting both gas-giant and super-Earth-type planets discovered with radial-velocity measurements. Using FORS2/VLT, we obtained position measurements of the star in the plane of the sky that tightly constrain its…