Related papers: The Persistent Missing Mass Problem in Planet Form…
Dust in protoplanetary disks is recognized as the building blocks of planets. In the core accretion scenario, the abundance of dust in disks (or metallicity) is crucial for forming cores of gas giants. We present our recent progress on the…
With their excellent photometric precision and dramatic increase in monitoring frequency, future microlensing survey experiments are expected to be sensitive to very short time-scale, isolated events caused by free-floating and…
Extrasolar planet surveys have begun to detect gas giant planets in orbit around M dwarf stars. While the frequency of gas giant planets around M dwarfs so far appears to be lower than that around G dwarfs, it is clearly not zero. Previous…
In star clusters, close stellar encounters can strongly impact the architecture of a planetary system or even destroy it. We present a systematic study on the effects of stellar flybys on two-planet systems. When such a system experiences…
Our galaxy is full with planets. We now know that planets and planetary systems are diverse and come with different sizes, masses and compositions, as well as various orbital architectures. Although there has been great progress in…
Because we know little about the Galactic force-field away from the plane, the Galactic mass distribution is very ill-determined. I show that a microlensing survey of galaxies closer than 50 Mpc would enable us to map in three dimensions…
We conduct a pebble-driven planet population synthesis study to investigate the formation of planets around very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, in the (sub)stellar mass range between $0.01 \ M_{\odot}$ and $0.1 \ M_{\odot}$. Based on the…
The process of planet formation offers a rich source of dust production via grain growth in protostellar discs, and via grinding of larger bodies in debris disc systems. Chemical evolution models, designed to follow the build up of metals…
We compute the accretion efficiency of small solids, with radii 1 cm $\le$ Rs $\le$ 10 m, on planets embedded in gaseous disks. Planets have masses 3 $\le$ Mp $\le$ 20 Earth masses (Me) and orbit within 10 AU of a solar-mass star. Disk…
The lifetime of protoplanetary disks is a crucial parameter for planet formation research. Observations of disk fractions in star clusters imply median disk lifetimes of 1 -- 3 Myr. This very short disk lifetime calls for planet formation…
We present N-body simulations of planetary system formation in thermally-evolving, viscous disc models. The simulations incorporate type I migration (including corotation torques and their saturation), gap formation, type II migration, gas…
We present preliminary results from our spectroscopic search for planets within 1 AU of metal-poor field dwarfs using NASA time with HIRES on Keck I. The core accretion model of gas giant planet formation is sensitive to the metallicity of…
Gap formation in a gas disk triggered by disk-planet tidal interaction is considered. Density waves launched by the planet are assumed to be damped as a result of their nonlinear evolution leading to shock formation and its subsequent…
The high occurrence rates of spiral arms and large central clearings in protoplanetary disks, if interpreted as signposts of giant planets, indicate that gas giants form commonly as companions to young stars ($<$ few Myr) at orbital…
Evidence of exoplanets with orbits that are misaligned with the spin of the host star may suggest that not all bound planets were born in the protoplanetary disk of their current planetary system. Observations have shown that free-floating…
In recent years several planets have been discovered at wide orbits (>100 AU) around their host stars. Theoretical studies encounter difficulties in explaining their formation and origin. Here we propose a novel scenario for the production…
We present an analysis of the atomic hydrogen and stellar properties of 38 late-type galaxies in the local Universe covering a wide range of HI mass-to-light ratios (M_HI/L_B), stellar luminosities, and surface brightnesses. From these data…
Of all planet-finding techniques, microlensing is potentially the most sensitive to Earth-mass planets. However, microlensing lightcurves generically yield only the planet-star mass ratio: the mass itself is uncertain to a factor of a few.…
An unsolved issue in the standard core accretion model for gaseous planet formation is how kilometre-sized planetesimals form from, initially, micron-sized dust grains. Solid growth beyond metre sizes can be difficult both because the…
Exoplanets around different types of stars provide a window into the diverse environments in which planets form. This chapter describes the observed relations between exoplanet populations and stellar properties and how they connect to…