Related papers: Internal Structure of Massive Terrestrial Planets

The chemical composition of a planetary body reflects its starting conditions modified by numerous processes during its formation and geological evolution. Measurements by X-ray, gamma-ray, and neutron spectrometers on the MESSENGER…

Small planets, 1-4x the size of Earth, are extremely common around Sun-like stars, and surprisingly so, as they are missing in our solar system. Recent detections have yielded enough information about this class of exoplanets to begin…

We investigate pathways for the formation of icy super-Earth mass planets orbiting at 125-250 AU around a 1 solar mass star. An extensive suite of coagulation calculations demonstrates that swarms of 1 cm to 10 m planetesimals can form…

The Kepler-discovered Systems with Tightly-packed Inner Planets (STIPs), typically with several planets of Earth to super-Earth masses on well-aligned, sub-AU orbits may host the most common type of planets, including habitable planets, in…

The rate at which giant planets accumulate solids and gas is a critical component of planet formation models, yet it is extremely challenging to predict from first principles. Characterizing the heavy element (everything other than hydrogen…

Extrasolar planetary host stars are enriched in key planet-building elements. These enrichments have the potential to drastically alter the building blocks available for terrestrial planet formation. Here we report on the combination of…

Close-in giant planets are thought to have formed in the cold outer regions of planetary systems and migrated inward, passing through the orbital parameter space occupied by the terrestrial planets in our own Solar System. We present…

The chemical composition of stars that have orbiting planets provides important clues about the frequency, architecture, and composition of exoplanet systems. We explore the possibility that stars from different galactic populations that…

To date, no accretion model has succeeded in reproducing all observed constraints in the inner Solar System. These constraints include 1) the orbits, in particular the small eccentricities, and 2) the masses of the terrestrial planets --…

The growth of a planetary core by pebble accretion stops at the so called pebble isolation mass, when the core generates a pressure bump that traps drifting pebbles outside its orbit. If the isolation mass is very small, then gas accretion…

The unknown constituents of the interior of our home planet have provoked the human imagination and driven scientific exploration. We herein demonstrate that large neutrino detectors could be used in the near future to significantly improve…

The Solar System includes two planets --- Mercury and Mars --- significantly less massive than Earth, and all evidence indicates that planets of similar size orbit many stars. In fact, one of the first exoplanets to be discovered is a…

Remnant planetesimals might have played an important role in reducing the orbital eccentricities of the terrestrial planets after their formation via giant impacts. However, the population and the size distribution of remnant planetesimals…

With n-body simulations, we model terrestrial circumbinary planet (CBP) formation with an initial surface density profile motivated by hydrodynamic circumbinary gas disc simulations. The binary plays an important role in shaping the initial…

In the late stage of terrestrial planet formation, planets are predicted to undergo pairwise collisions known as giant impacts. Here we present a high-resolution database of giant impacts for differentiated colliding bodies of iron-silicate…

Gas giant planets are far easier than terrestrial planets to detect around other stars, and are thought to form much more quickly than terrestrial planets. Thus, in systems with giant planets, the late stages of terrestrial planet formation…

We examine the accretion of cores of giant planets from planetesimals, gas accretion onto the cores, and their orbital migration. We adopt a working model for nascent protostellar disks with a wide variety of surface density distributions…

At least 30\% of main sequence stars host planets with sizes of between 1 and 4 Earth radii and orbital periods of less than 100 days. We use N-body simulations including a model for gas-assisted pebble accretion and disk--planet tidal…

We develop a simple model for computing planetary formation based on the core instability model for the gas accretion and the oligarchic growth regime for the accretion of the solid core. In this model several planets can form…

How multiple close-in super-Earths form around stars with masses lower than that of the Sun is still an open issue. Several recent modeling studies have focused on planet formation around M-dwarf stars, but so far no studies have focused…