Related papers: Implications for the formation of Oort cloud-like …
Newly formed stars are often observed to possess circumstellar disks, from which mass continues to be accreted onto the star and fed into outflowing jets, and which eventually may evolve into dusty debris disks and planetary systems. Recent…
The disk instability model is a promising pathway for giant planet formation in various conditions. At the moment, population synthesis models are used to investigate the outcomes of this theory, where a key ingredient of the disk…
The Kepler satellite has discovered a number of transiting planets around close binary stars. These circumbinary systems have highly aligned planetary and binary orbits. In this paper, we explore how the mutual inclination between the…
Planets are a natural byproduct of the stellar formation process, resulting from local aggregations of material within the disks surrounding young stars. Whereas signatures of gas-giant planets at large orbital separations have been…
Most stars form in highly clustered environments within molecular clouds, but eventually disperse into the distributed stellar field population. Exactly how the stellar distribution evolves from the embedded stage into gas-free associations…
The study of the development of structures on multiple scales in the cold interstellar medium has experienced rapid expansion in the past decade, on both the observational and the theoretical front. Spectral line studies at (sub-)millimeter…
The compact multi-transiting planet systems discovered by Kepler challenge planet formation theories. Formation in situ from disks with radial mass surface density, $\Sigma$, profiles similar to the minimum mass solar nebula (MMSN) but…
This chapter reviews the dynamical processes in young stellar clusters. The accretion of gas by individual stars affects the dynamics of the cluster, and the masses of the stars. Dynamical mass segregation cannot explain the degree of mass…
We use numerical N-body simulations of the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) to investigate the destruction of protoplanetary disks by close stellar encounters and UV radiation from massive stars. The simulations model a cluster of 4000 stars, and…
Starting from planetary systems with three giant planets and an outer disk of planetesimals, we use dynamical simulations to show how dynamical instabilities can transform planetesimal disks into 100-1000 AU-scale isotropic clouds. The…
The giant impact phase of terrestrial planet formation establishes connections between super-Earths' orbital properties (semimajor axis spacings, eccentricities, mutual inclinations) and interior compositions (the presence or absence of…
The Oort cloud (OC) probably formed more than 4$\,$Gyr ago and has been moving with the Sun in the Galaxy since, exposed to external influences, most prominently to the Galactic tide and passing field stars. Theories suggest that other…
We model the effects of collisions and close encounters on the stellar populations observed in the Milky Way nuclear stellar cluster (NSC). Our analysis is based on $N$-body simulations in which the NSC forms by accretion of massive stellar…
A numerical simulation of the Oort cloud is used to explain the observed orbital distributions and numbers of Jupiter-family and Halley-type short-period comets. Comets are given initial orbits with perihelion distances between 5 and 36 AU,…
In this paper, we present results from a multi-stage numerical campaign to begin to explain and determine why extreme debris disk detections are rare, what types of impacts will result in extreme debris disks and what we can learn about the…
Stars formed in clusters can encounter other stars at close distances. In typical open clusters in the Solar neighbourhood containing hundreds or thousands of member stars, ten to twenty per cent of Solar-mass member stars are expected to…
Comet nuclei in the outer Solar system are constantly irradiated by cosmic rays at low temperatures. Accumulated high concentrations of radicals can undergo fast recombination with significant heating of cometary surface layers. We present…
Many debris discs reveal a two-component structure, with an outer Kuiper-belt analogue and a warm inner component whose origin is still a matter of debate. One possibility is that warm emission stems from an "asteroid belt" closer in to the…
In view of the many recent observations conducted by ALMA and SPHERE, it is becoming clear that protoplanetary disks form planets in narrow annular gaps at various distances from the central protostars before these protostars are actually…
We investigate how the formation and evolution of extrasolar planetary systems can be affected by stellar encounters that occur in the crowded conditions of a stellar cluster. Using plausible estimates of cluster evolution, we show how…