Related papers: From gas to ice giants: A unified mechanism for eq…
Strong eastward jets at the equator have been observed in many planetary atmospheres and simulated in numerical models of varying complexity. However, the nature of the transition from a conventional state of the general circulation, with…
The eddy fluxes of angular momentum in Jupiter's upper troposphere are known to converge in prograde jets and diverge in retrograde jets. Away from the equator, this implies convergence of the Eulerian mean meridional flow in zones…
The global structure of the atmosphere and the oceans is a continuous source of intriguing challenges in geophysical fluid dynamics (GFD). Among these, jets are determinant in the air and water circulation around the Earth. In the last…
We discuss our current understanding of the interior structure and thermal evolution of giant planets. This includes the gas giants, such as Jupiter and Saturn, that are primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, as well as the "ice…
The origin of hot Jupiters -- gas giant exoplanets orbiting very close to their host stars -- is a long-standing puzzle. Planet formation theories suggest that such planets are unlikely to have formed in-situ but instead may have formed at…
The discovery of many exoplanets has revealed an incredible diversity of orbital architectures. These orbital configurations are intrinsically linked to the potential for habitable environments within the system, since the gravitational…
Gas giant planets are differentially rotating magnetic objects that have strong and complex interactions with their environment. In our Solar system, they interact with their numerous moons while exoplanets with very short orbital periods…
The fact that most extrasolar planets found to date are orbiting metal-rich stars lends credence to the core accretion mechanism of gas giant planet formation over its competitor, the disc instability mechanism. However, the core accretion…
Solar jets, characterized by small-scale plasma ejections along open magnetic field lines or the legs of large-scale coronal loops, play a crucial role in the dynamics of the solar atmosphere. Although spectral and EUV images have been…
Planet-planet scattering best explains the eccentricity distribution of extrasolar giant planets. Past literature showed that the orbits of planets evolve due to planet-planet scattering. This work studies the spin evolution of planets in…
We demonstrate that turbulent zonal jets, analogous to Jovian ones, which are quasi-stationary, are actually metastable. After extremely long times, they randomly switch to new configurations with a different number of jets. The genericity…
Recently, gas giant planets in nearly circular orbits with large semimajor axes ($a \sim$ 30--1000AU) have been detected by direct imaging. We have investigated orbital evolution in a formation scenario for such planets, based on core…
In the nucleated instability picture of gas giant formation, the final stage is the rapid accretion of a massive gas envelope by a solid core, bringing about a tenfold or more increase in mass. This tends to trigger the scattering of any…
As gas giant planets evolve, they may scatter other planets far from their original orbits to produce hot Jupiters or rogue planets that are not gravitationally bound to any star. Here, we consider planets cast out to large orbital…
The precise mechanism that forms jets and large-scale vortices on the giant planets is unknown. An inverse cascade has been suggested. Alternatively, energy may be directly injected by small-scale convection. Our aim is to clarify whether…
We present a dynamo mechanism arising from the presence of barotropically unstable zonal jet currents in a rotating spherical shell. The shear instability of the zonal flow develops in the form of a global Rossby mode, whose azimuthal…
We report a calculation of time-dependent quasi-geostrophic core flows for 1940-2010. Inverting recursively for an ensemble of solutions, we evaluate the main source of uncertainties, namely the model errors arising from interactions…
Equatorial superrotation under zonally-symmetric thermal forcing is investigated in a setup close to that of the classic Held & Suarez (1994) setup. In contrast to the behaviour in the classic setup, a transition to equatorial superrotation…
We explore a new, efficient mechanism that can power toroidally magnetized jets up to two to three times their original terminal velocity after they enter a self-similar phase of magnetic acceleration. Underneath the elongated outflow lobe…
A large body of theoretical and computational work shows that jets - modelled as magnetized disk winds - exert an external torque on their underlying disks that can efficiently remove angular momentum and act as major drivers of disk…