Related papers: Large scattering events and the formation of plane…
Observations in the past decade have revealed extrasolar planets with a wide range of orbital semimajor axes and eccentricities. Based on the present understanding of planet formation via core accretion and oligarchic growth, we expect that…
In most extrasolar planetary systems, the present orbits of known giant planets admit the existence of stable terrestrial planets. Those same giant planets, however, have typically eccentric orbits that hint at violent early dynamics less…
As gas giant planets evolve, they may scatter other planets far from their original orbits to produce hot Jupiters or rogue planets that are not gravitationally bound to any star. Here, we consider planets cast out to large orbital…
We study the final architecture of planetary systems that evolve under the combined effects of planet-planet and planetesimal scattering. Using N-body simulations we investigate the dynamics of marginally unstable systems of gas and ice…
The large eccentricities of many giant extrasolar planets may represent the endpoint of gravitational scattering in initially more crowded systems. If so, the early evolution of the giant planets is likely to be more restrictive of…
Gravitational scattering between massive planets has been invoked to explain the eccentricity distribution of extrasolar planets. For scattering to occur, the planets must either form in -- or migrate into -- an unstable configuration. In…
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 ubiquity of planets and diversity of planetary systems reveal planet formation encompass many complex and competing processes. In this series of papers, we develop and upgrade a population synthesis model as a tool to identify the…
Most observed extrasolar planets have masses similar to, but orbits very different from, the gas giants of our solar system. Many are much closer to their parent stars than would have been expected and their orbits are often rather…
During the late stage of planet formation when Mars-size cores appear, interactions among planetary cores can excite their orbital eccentricities, speed their merges and thus sculpture the final architecture of planet systems. This series…
Gas giant planets have been detected on eccentric orbits several hundreds of astronomical units in size around other stars. It has been proposed that even the Sun hosts a wide-orbit planet of 5-10 Earth masses, often called Planet Nine,…
Giant planets dominate the mass of many planetary systems, including the Solar System, and represent the best-characterized class of extrasolar planets. Understanding the formation of giant planets bridges the high mass end of the planet…
We show that interaction with a gas disk may produce young planetary systems with closely-spaced orbits, stabilized by mean-motion resonances between neighbors. On longer timescales, after the gas is gone, interaction with a remnant…
Exoplanetary systems host giant planets on substantially non-circular, close-in orbits. We propose that these eccentricities arise in a phase of giant impacts, analogous to the final stage of Solar System assembly that formed Earth's Moon.…
Recent observations have revealed two new classes of planetary orbits. Rossiter- Mclaughlin (RM) measurements have revealed hot Jupiters in high-obliquity orbits. In addition, direct-imaging has discovered giant planets at large (~ 100 AU)…
Many exoplanets in close-in orbits are observed to have relatively high eccentricities and large stellar obliquities. We explore the possibility that these result from planet-planet scattering by studying the dynamical outcomes from a large…
Hydrodynamical simulations of two giant planets embedded in a gaseous disk have shown that in case of a smooth convergent migration they end up trapped into a mean motion resonance. These findings have led to the conviction that the onset…
We study the formation of a giant gas planet by the core--accretion gas--capture process, with numerical simulations, under the assumption that the planetary core forms in the center of an anti-cyclonic vortex. The presence of the vortex…
Gas giant planets, if present, are the most massive objects in a planetary system and play a pivotal role in shaping its overall architecture. The formation of these planets has constantly been a central issue in planetary science.…