Related papers: Free Floating or Merely Detached?
Unexpected clustering in the orbital elements of minor bodies beyond the Kuiper belt has led to speculations that our solar system actually hosts nine planets, the eight established plus a hypothetical "Planet Nine". Several recent studies…
Recent {\em Kepler} observations revealed an unexpected abundance of "hot" Earth-size to Neptune-size planets in the inner $0.02-0.2$ AU from their parent stars. We propose that these smaller planets are the remnants of massive giant…
Over the course of the past two decades, observational surveys have unveiled the intricate orbital structure of the Kuiper Belt, a field of icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. In addition to a host of readily-predictable orbital…
Approximately half of the planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission are in systems where just a single planet transits its host star, and the remaining planets are observed to be in multi-planet systems. Recent analyses have reported a…
Thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets have been identified in recent years. Consequently, theoretical research on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems has seen a boost, and the processes of planet-planet…
This paper explores the intermediate-time dynamics of newly formed solar systems with a focus on possible mechanisms for planetary migration. We consider two limiting corners of the available parameter space -- crowded systems containing…
The known extrasolar multiple-planet systems share a surprising dynamical attribute: they cluster just beyond the Hill stability boundary. Here we show that the planet-planet scattering model, which naturally explains the observed exoplanet…
Chaotic dynamics are expected during and after planet formation, and a leading mechanism to explain large eccentricities of gas giant exoplanets is planet-planet gravitational scattering. The same scattering has been invoked to explain…
Among more than 200 extrasolar planet candidates discovered to date, there is no known planet orbiting around normal binary stars. In this paper, we demonstrate that microlensing is a technique that can detect such planets. Microlensing…
Planets are common objects in the Universe, observationally as well as theoretically. However, the standard theory of their formation encounters many difficulties, such as dust fall and disk lifetime problems. We positively analyze them,…
Extrasolar planets and belts of debris orbiting post-main-sequence single stars may become unbound as the evolving star loses mass. In multiple star systems, the presence or co-evolution of the additional stars can significantly complicate…
Free-floating planets comprise one of the most enigmatic populations of exoplanets in the Galaxy. Though ground-based observations point to a large abundance of these worlds, little is known about their origins and demographics. In the…
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…
The Neptune desert is no longer empty. A handful of close-in planets with masses between those of Neptune and Saturn have now been discovered, and their puzzling properties have inspired a number of interesting theories on the formation and…
The discovery of planetary systems beyond our solar system has challenged established theories of planetary formation. Planetary orbits display a variety of unexpected architectures, and free-floating planets appear ubiquitous. The recent…
The majority of discovered exoplanets have been observed orbiting field stars as opposed to within a star cluster. To determine whether the lack of observed exoplanets in star clusters is due to gravitational perturbations or observational…
The chance that a planetary system will interact with another member of its host star's nascent cluster would be greatly increased if gas giant planets form in situ on wide orbits. In this paper, we explore the outcomes of planet-planet…
Earth-sized planets were observed in close-in orbits around M dwarfs. While more and more planets are expected to be uncovered around M dwarfs, theories of their formation and dynamical evolution are still in their infancy. We investigate…
Though free-floating planets (FFPs) may outpopulate their bound counterparts in the terrestrial-mass range, they remain one of the least explored exoplanet demographics. Due to their negligible electromagnetic emission at all wavelengths,…
Gravitational microlensing is currently the only technique that helps study the Galactic distribution of planets as a function of distance from the Galactic center. The Galactic location of a lens system can be uniquely determined only when…