Related papers: Failed Oort Clouds and Planetary Migration
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…
The dense molecular cloud cores that form stars, like other self-gravitating objects, undergo bulk oscillations. Just at the point of gravitational instability, their fundamental oscillation mode has zero frequency. We study, using…
The Sun was born in a clustered environment with 10,000 other stars. Being an isolated star today, the Sun must have left the nest. We do not directly know when that happened, how violent the ejection was, or how far the Solar siblings have…
A large sample of planet-planet scattering events for three planet systems with different orbital separations and masses is analyzed with a multiple regression model. The dependence of the time for the onset of instability on the masses of…
A large fraction of white dwarfs (WDs) have metal-polluted atmospheres, which are produced by accreting material from remnant planetary systems. The composition of the accreted debris broadly resembles that of rocky Solar System objects.…
We consider planetary systems evolving under the effect of a Stokes-type dissipative force mimicking the outcome of a type II migration process. As inward migration proceeds and the planets follow the circular family (they start on circular…
Formation of the first planetesimals remains an unsolved problem. Growth by sticking must initiate the process, but multiple studies have revealed a series of barriers that can slow or stall growth, most of them due to nebula turbulence. In…
As a stellar group forms within its parent molecular cloud, new members first appear in the deep interior. These overcrowded stars continually diffuse outward to the cloud boundary, and even beyond. Observations have so far documented only…
Observational constraints on planet spin-axis has recently become possible, and revealed a system that favors a large spin-axis misalignment, a low stellar spin-orbit misalignment and a high eccentricity. To explain the origin of such…
Planetary migration is the process by which a forming planet undergoes a drift of its semi-major axis caused by the tidal interaction with its parent protoplanetary disc. One of the key quantities to assess the migration of embedded planets…
Most known trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) gravitationally scattering off the giant planets have orbital inclinations consistent with an origin from the classical Kuiper belt, but a small fraction of these "scattering TNOs" have inclinations…
The planet formation process and subsequent planet migration may lead to configurations resulting in strong dynamical interactions among the various planets. Well-studied possible outcomes include collisions between planets, scattering…
Substantial orbital migration of massive planets may occur in most extrasolar planetary systems. Since migration is likely to occur after a significant fraction of the dust has been locked up into planetesimals, ubiquitous migration could…
Planetary systems formed in clusters may be subject to stellar encounter flybys. Here we create a diverse range of representative planetary systems with different orbital scales and planets' masses and examine encounters between them in a…
The dynamical interaction of minor bodies (such as comets or asteroids) with planets plays an essential role in the planetary system's architecture and evolution. As a result of these interactions, structures like the Kuiper belt and the…
Since 1950 when Oort published his paper on the structure of the cloud of comets it is believed that stars passing near this hypothetical cometary reservoir play an important role in the dynamical evolution of long period comets and…
Clouds of metal-bearing condensates play a critical role in shaping the emergent spectral energy distributions of the coolest classes of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, L and T dwarfs. Because condensate clouds in planetary atmospheres…
The turbulent environment from which stars form may lead to misalignment between the stellar spin and the remnant protoplanetary disk. By using hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic simulations, we demonstrate that a wide range of stellar…
Gravitationally-bound clusters that survive gas removal represent an unusual mode of star formation in the Milky Way and similar spiral galaxies. While forming, they can be distinguished observationally from unbound star formation by their…
The small bodies in the Kuiper Belt region of the distant Solar System are leftovers from planet formation. Their orbital distribution today tells us about how giant planets migrated, while their surface properties, shapes, and sizes tell…