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Earth's climate, mantle, and core interact over geologic timescales. Climate influences whether plate tectonics can take place on a planet, with cool climates being favorable for plate tectonics because they enhance stresses in the…
H$_2$O is a key molecule in characterizing atmospheres of temperate terrestrial planets, and observations of transmission spectra are expected to play a primary role in detecting its signatures in the near future. The detectability of…
Many features of the outer solar system are replicated in numerical simulations if the giant planets undergo an orbital instability that ejects one or more ice giants. During this instability, Jupiter and Saturn's orbits diverge, crossing…
A gap in exoplanets' radius distribution has been widely attributed to the photo-evaporation threshold of their progenitors' gaseous envelope. Giant impacts can also lead to substantial mass-loss. The outflowing gas endures tidal torque…
Complex structures, including sharp edges, rings and gaps, have been commonly observed in protoplanetary disks with or without planetary candidates. Here we consider the possibility that they are the intrinsic consequences of angular…
A variety of observations provide evidence for vigorous motion in the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and directly imaged giant planets. Motivated by these observations, we examine the dynamical regime of the circulation in the atmospheres and…
An abundance decrease in carbon- and oxygen-bearing species relative to dust has been frequently found in planet-forming disks, which can be attributed to an overall reduction of gas mass. However, in the case of TW Hya, the only disk with…
Changes that occur on our planet can be tracked back to one of two energy sources: the sun and the Earth's internal energy. The motion of tectonic plates, volcanism, mountain building and the reshaping of our planet's surface over geologic…
Planets migrate due to the recoil they experience from scattering solid (planetesimal) bodies. To first order, the torques exerted by the interior and exterior disks cancel, analogous to the cancellation of the torques from the…
Terrestrial planets at the inner edge of the habitable zone of late-K and M-dwarf stars are expected to be in synchronous rotation, as a consequence of strong tidal interactions with their host stars. Previous global climate model (GCM)…
The Earth is known to be depleted in volatile lithophile elements in a fashion that defies easy explanation. We resolve this anomaly with a model that combines the porosity of collisionally grown dust grains in protoplanetary disks with…
The impact of the inner structure and thermal history of planets on their observable features, such as luminosity or magnetic field, crucially depends on the poorly known heat and charge transport properties of their internal layers. The…
Hot Jupiters can experience mass loss driven by heating from UV radiation from their host stars, and this flow is often controlled by magnetic fields. More specifically, near the planetry surface, the magnetic pressure dominates the ram…
The oxidation of rocky planet surfaces and atmospheres, which arises from the twin forces of stellar nucleosynthesis and gravitational differentiation, is a universal process of key importance to habitability and exoplanet biosignature…
Exoplanets with short orbit period reside very close to their host stars. They transition very rapidly between different sectors of the circumstellar space environment along their orbit, leading to large variations of the magnetic field in…
The diversity of planetary systems that have been discovered are revealing the plethora of possible architectures, providing insights into planet formation and evolution. They also increase our understanding of system parameters that may…
The general circulation of the atmosphere determines the long-term variability of weather processes. This circulation is driven by the temperature differences between the poles and the equator, causing air to move along the Earth's surface.…
The surface of both Jupiter and Saturn has magnificent vortical storms which help shape the dynamic nature of their atmospheres. Land- and space-based observational campaigns over time have established several properties of these vortices,…
Atmospheric mass loss is a fundamental phenomenon shaping the structure and evolution of planetary atmospheres. It can engage processes ranging from global interactions with the host star and large-scale hydrodynamic outflows to essentially…
The terrestrial planets are believed to have formed by violent collisions of tens of lunar- to Mars-size protoplanets at time t<200 Myr after the protoplanetary gas disk dispersal (t_0). The solar system giant planets rapidly formed during…