Related papers: Limits on Stellar Flybys in the Solar Birth Cluste…
Most planetary systems -- including our own -- are born within stellar clusters, where interactions with neighboring stars can help shape the system architecture. This paper develops an orbit-averaged formalism to characterize the cluster's…
An instability among the giant planets' orbits can match many aspects of the Solar System's current orbital architecture. We explore the possibility that this dynamical instability was triggered by the close passage of a star or substellar…
Most stars form in clusters where relatively close encounters with other stars are common and can leave imprints on the orbital architecture of planetary systems. In this paper, we investigate the inclination excitation of debris disk…
The Sun likely formed as part of a group of stars. A close stellar flyby by one of the solar siblings is probably responsible for the sharp outer edge in the solar system`s mass distribution. The frequency of such close flybys can be used…
Sedna-like objects (a.k.a. sednoids) are transneptunian objects (TNOs) characterized by large semimajor axes and exceptionally high perihelia. Their high-$q$ orbits are detached from the influence of the four giant planets and need extra…
We have computed trajectories, distances and times of closest approaches to the Sun by stars in the Solar neighbourhood with known position, radial velocity and proper motions. For this purpose we have used a full potential model of the…
The solar system was most likely born in a star cluster containing at least 1000 stars. It is highly probable that this cluster environment influenced various properties of the solar system like its chemical composition, size and the…
This paper reviews our current understanding of the possible birth environments of our Solar System. Since most stars form within groups and clusters, the question becomes one of determining the nature of the birth aggregate of the Sun.…
Using the observed properties of our solar system, in particular the isotopic compositions of meteorites and the regularity of the planetary orbits, we constrain the star formation environment of the Sun within the scenario of (external)…
A number of authors have argued that the Sun must have been born in a cluster of no more than about 1000 stars, on the basis that, in a larger cluster, close encounters between the Sun and other stars would have truncated the outer Solar…
The architecture and evolution of planetary systems are shaped in part by stellar flybys. Within this context, we look at stellar encounters which are too weak to immediately destabilize a planetary system but are nevertheless strong enough…
Stars do not form in isolation but together with other stars, and often in a clustered environment. Depending on the initial conditions in these environments, such as initial density and substructure, the distances of encounters between…
Young stars are mostly found in dense stellar environments, and even our own Solar system may have formed in a star cluster. Here, we numerically explore the evolution of planetary systems similar to our own Solar system in star clusters.…
Every Galactic environment is characterized by a stellar density and a velocity dispersion. With this information from literature, we simulated flyby encounters for several Galactic regions, numerically calculating stellar trajectories as…
Numerous protoplanetary discs show distinct spiral arms features. While possibly caused by a range of processes, detailed pattern analysis points at close stellar flybys as cause for some of them. Surprisingly, these discs reside in young…
The anomalous chemical abundances and the structure of the Edgewood-Kuiper belt observed in the solar system constrain the initial mass and radius of the star cluster in which the sun was born to $M\simeq500$ to 3000 \msun and $R\simeq 1$…
Unlike the Solar System planets, thousands of smaller bodies beyond Neptune orbit the Sun on eccentric ($e >$ 0.1) and ($i>$ 3$^\circ$) orbits. While migration of the giant planets during the early stages of Solar System evolution can…
The discovery of high incidence of hot Jupiters in dense clusters challenges the field-based hot Jupiter formation theory. In dense clusters, interactions between planetary systems and flyby stars are relatively common. This has a…
The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and…
Stellar flybys in star clusters may perturb the evolution of young planetary systems in terms of disk truncation, planetary migration and planetary mass accretion. We investigate the feedback of a young planetary system during a single…