Related papers: Planets Rapidly Create Holes in Young Circumstella…

Giant planets embedded in circumstellar discs are expected to open gaps in these discs. We examine the vertical structure of the gap edges. We find that the planet excites spiral arms with significant (Mach number of a half) vertical motion…

It has been suggested that long-period giant planets, such as HD 95086b and HR 8799bcde, may have formed through gravitational instability of protoplanetary discs. However, self-gravitating disc-satellite interaction can lead to the…

The core accretion hypothesis posits that planets with significant gaseous envelopes accreted them from their protoplanetary discs after the formation of rocky/icy cores. Observations indicate that such exoplanets exist at a broad range of…

Photo-evaporation and planet formation have both been proposed as mechanisms responsible for the creation of a transition disc. We have studied their combined effect through a suite of 2d simulations of protoplanetary discs undergoing X-ray…

Recent ALMA observations may indicate a surprising abundance of sub-Jovian planets on very wide orbits in protoplanetary discs that are only a few million years old. These planets are too young and distant to have been formed via the Core…

I discuss the role that disc fragmentation plays in the formation of gas giant and terrestrial planets, and how this relates to the formation of brown dwarfs and low-mass stars, and ultimately to the process of star formation. Protostellar…

Gap-opening planets can generate dust-trapping vortices that may explain some of the latest discoveries of high-contrast crescent-shaped dust asymmetries in transition discs. While planet-induced vortices were previously thought to have…

In the classical core-accretion planet formation scenario, rapid inward migration and accretion timescales of kilometer size planetesimals may not favor the formation of massive cores of giant planets before the dissipation of…

The satellites of Jupiter are thought to form in a circumplanetary disc. Here we address their formation and orbital evolution with a population synthesis approach, by varying the dust-to-gas ratio, the disc dispersal timescale and the dust…

ALMA has observed a plethora of ring-like structures in planet forming discs at distances of 10-100 au from their host star. Although several mechanisms have been invoked to explain the origin of such rings, a common explanation is that…

Determining the mechanisms that drive the evolution of protoplanetary disks is a necessary step to understand how planets form. Here we measured the mass accretion rate for young stellar objects at age >5 Myr, a critical test for the…

Solar-mass stars form via circumstellar disk accretion (disk-mediated accretion). Recent findings indicate that this process is likely episodic in the form of accretion bursts, possibly caused by disk fragmentation. Although it cannot be…

Planets are a natural byproduct of the stellar formation process, resulting from local aggregations of material within the disks surrounding young stars. Whereas signatures of gas-giant planets at large orbital separations have been…

Gas-giant planets, like Jupiter and Saturn, acquire massive gaseous envelopes during the approximately 3 Myr-long lifetimes of protoplanetary discs. In the core accretion scenario, the formation of a solid core of around 10 Earth masses…

Over the past 25 years, observations have uncovered a large population of free-floating planets (FFPs), whose origins remain debated. Massive FFPs (several Jupiter masses or more) may form via gravitational collapse of molecular clouds,…

Planet formation occurs around a wide range of stellar masses and stellar system architectures. An improved understanding of the formation process can be achieved by studying it across the full parameter space, particularly toward the…

Stars in disks of spiral galaxies are usually assumed to remain roughly at their birth radii. This assumption is built into decades of modelling of the evolution of stellar populations in our own Galaxy and in external systems. We present…

Discs of gas and dust surrounding young stars are the birthplace of planets. However, direct detection of protoplanets forming within discs has proved elusive to date. We present the detection of a large, localized deviation from Keplerian…

We propose a new hypothesis for the origin of protoplanetary discs with large inner holes (or gaps), so-called transition discs. Our gas disc model takes into account layered accretion, in which poorly-ionized low-viscosity dead zones are…

Sgr A* is extra-ordinarily dim in all wavelengths requiring a very low accretion rate at the present time. However, at a radial distance of a fraction of a parsec from Sgr A*, two rings populated by young massive stars suggest a recent…