Related papers: Giant Planet Formation by Disk Instability
Disk instability is an attractive yet controversial means for the rapid formation of giant planets in our solar system and elsewhere. Recent concerns regarding the first adiabatic exponent of molecular hydrogen gas are addressed and shown…
Forming giant planets by disk instability requires a gaseous disk that is massive enough to become gravitationally unstable and able to cool fast enough for self-gravitating clumps to form and survive. Models with simplified disk cooling…
Doppler surveys have shown that more massive stars have significantly higher frequencies of giant planets inside $\sim$ 3 AU than lower mass stars, consistent with giant planet formation by core accretion. Direct imaging searches have begun…
Gravitational instability has been invoked as a possible mechanism of giant planet formation in protoplanetary disks. Here we critically revise its viability by noting that for the direct production of giant planets it is not enough for…
Both core accretion and disk instability appear to be required as formation mechanisms in order to explain the entire range of giant planets found in extrasolar planetary systems. Disk instability is based on the formation of clumps in a…
Massive disk fragmentation has been suggested to be one of the mechanisms leading to the formation of giant planets. While it has been heavily studied in quiescent hydrodynamic disks, the effect of MHD turbulence arising from the…
The core-accretion mechanism for gas giant formation may be too slow to create all observed gas giant planets during reasonable gas disk lifetimes, but it has yet to be firmly established that the disk instability model can produce…
Gas giant planets play a fundamental role in shaping the orbital architecture of planetary systems and in affecting the delivery of volatile materials to terrestrial planets in the habitable zones. Current theories of gas giant planet…
The large number of detected giant exoplanets offers the opportunity to improve our understanding of the formation mechanism, evolution, and interior structure of gas giant planets. The two main models for giant planet formation are core…
Protoplanetary gas disks are likely to experience gravitational instabilites (GI's) during some phase of their evolution. Density perturbations in an unstable disk grow on a dynamic time scale into spiral arms that produce efficient outward…
There has been disagreement currently about whether cooling in protoplanetary disks can be sufficiently fast to induce the formation of gas giant protoplanets via gravitational instabilities. Simulations by our own group and others indicate…
We present a suite of three dimensional radiative gravitational hydrodynamics models suggesting that binary stars may be quite capable of forming planetary systems similar to our own. The new models with binary companions do not employ any…
Gravitational instability (GI) has long been considered a viable pathway for giant planet formation in protoplanetary disks (PPDs), especially at wide orbital separations or around low-mass stars where core accretion faces significant…
We use resistive magnetohydrodynamical simulations with the nested grid technique to study the formation of protoplanetary disks around protostars from molecular cloud cores that provide the realistic environments for planet formation. We…
Recent direct imaging discoveries suggest a new class of massive, distant planets around A stars. These widely separated giants have been interpreted as signs of planet formation driven by gravitational instability, but the viability of…
The two current models for giant planet formation are core accretion and disk instability. We discuss the core masses and overall planetary enrichment in heavy elements predicted by the two formation models, and show that both models could…
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…
Observational studies show that the probability of finding gas giant planets around a star increases with the star's metallicity. Our latest simulations of disks undergoing gravitational instabilities (GIs) with realistic radiative cooling…
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…
Planet formation models are necessary to understand the origins of diverse planetary systems. Circumstellar disc substructures have been proposed as preferred locations of planet formation but a complete formation scenario has not been…