Related papers: Particle Pile-ups and Planetesimal Formation
The growth process of proto-planets can be sped-up by accreting a large number of solid, pebble-sized objects that are still present in the protoplanetary disc. It is still an open question on how efficient this process works in realistic…
In the innermost regions of protoplanerary discs, the solid-to-gas ratio can be increased considerably by a number of processes, including photoevaporative and particle drift. MHD disc models also suggest the existence of a dead-zone at…
Turbulence acting on mixes of gas and particles generally evenly diffuses the latter through the former. However, in the presence of background gas temperature gradients a phenomenon known as turbulent thermal diffusion appears as a…
Planets form and obtain their compositions from the leftover material present in protoplanetary disks of dust and gas surrounding young stars. The chemical make-up of a disk influences every aspect of planetary composition including their…
More than a decade of dedicated experimental work on the collisional physics of protoplanetary dust has brought us to a point at which the growth of dust aggregates can - for the first time - be self-consistently and reliably modelled. In…
Turbulence in protoplanetary disks affects planet formation in many ways. While small dust particles are mainly affected by the aerodynamical coupling with turbulent gas velocity fields, planetesimals and larger bodies are more affected by…
Context: The streaming instability (SI) is a leading candidate for reaching solid densities sufficient to trigger the gravitational collapse needed for the formation of planetesimals. However, dust growth barriers appear to impede the…
Protoplanetary disks naturally emerge during protostellar core-collapse. In their early evolutionary stages, infalling material dominates their dynamical evolution. In the context of planet formation, this means that the conditions in young…
Extensive photometric stellar surveys show that many main sequence stars show emission at infrared and longer wavelengths that is in excess of the stellar photosphere; this emission is thought to arise from circumstellar dust. The presence…
Galaxies above redshift 1 can be very clumpy, with irregular morphologies dominated by star complexes as large as 2 kpc and as massive as a few 10^8 or 10^9 Mo. Their co-moving densities and rapid evolution suggest that most present-day…
Young protostellar discs are likely to be both self-gravitating, and to support grain growth to sizes where the particles decoupled from the gas. This combination could lead to short-wavelength fragmentation of the solid component in…
Modern studies of the early solar system routinely invoke the possibility of an orbital instability among the giant planets triggered by gravitational interactions between the planets and a massive exterior disk of planetesimals. Previous…
Low-mass, metal-enriched stars were likely present as early as cosmic dawn. In this work, we investigate whether these stars could have hosted planets in their protoplanetary disks. If so, these would have been the first planets to form in…
Turbulence plays a key role in the transport of pebble-sized particles. It also affects the ability of pebbles to be accreted by protoplanets, because it stirs pebbles out of the disk midplane. In addition, turbulence can suppress pebble…
This review introduces physical processes in protoplanetary disks relevant to accretion and the initial stages of planet formation. After a brief overview of the observational context, I introduce the elementary theory of disk structure and…
We present a detailed computational study of the assembly of protostellar disks and massive stars in molecular clouds with supersonic turbulence. We follow the evolution of large scale filamentary structures in a cluster-forming clump down…
(Abridged) Planetesimals embedded in a protoplanetary disc are stirred by gravitational torques exerted by density fluctuations in the surrounding turbulence. In particular, planetesimals in a disc supporting fully developed…
The current picture of terrestrial planet formation relies heavily on our understanding of the dynamical evolution of planetesimals -- asteroid-like bodies thought to be planetary building blocks. In this study we investigate the growth of…
We analyse the concentration of solid particles in vortices created and sustained by radial buoyancy in protoplanetary disks, i.e. baroclinic vortex growth. Besides the gas drag acting on particles we also allow for back-reaction from dust…
Infall of interstellar material is a potential non-planetary origin of pressure bumps in protoplanetary disks. While pressure bumps arising from other mechanisms have been numerically demonstrated to promote planet formation, the impact of…