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Most stars form in star clusters and stellar associated. To understand the roles of star cluster environments in shaping the dynamical evolution of planetary systems, we carry out direct $N$-body simulations of four planetary systems models…
Context. The presence of a stellar companion can strongly influence the architecture and long-term stability of planetary systems. Motivated by the discovery of exoplanets exhibiting extremely high eccentricities (e >= 0.8) in systems with…
We explore the orbital dynamics of systems consisting of three planets, each as massive as the Earth, on coplanar, initially circular, orbits about a star of one solar mass. The initial semimajor axes of the planets are equally spaced in…
During the process of planet formation, the planet-discs interactions might excite (or damp) the orbital eccentricity of the planet. In this paper, we present two long ($t\sim 3\times 10^5$ orbits) numerical simulations: (a) one (with a…
Wide-orbit exoplanets are starting to be detected, and planetary formation models are under development to understand their properties. We propose a population of "Oort" planets around other stars, forming by a mechanism analogous to how…
Recent studies reveal that the free eccentricities of Kepler-34b and Kepler-413b are much larger than their forced eccentricities, implying that the scattering events may take place in their formation. The observed orbital configuration of…
We consider trends resulting from two formation mechanisms for short-period super-Earths: planet-planet scattering and migration. We model scenarios where these planets originate near the snow line in ``cold finger'' circumstellar disks.…
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…
A fundamental question in the study of planetary system demographics is: how common is the solar system architecture? The primary importance of this question lies in the potential of planetary systems to create habitable environments, and…
At least 10-15% of nearby sun-like stars have known Jupiter-mass planets. In contrast, very few planets are found in mature open and globular clusters such as the Hyades and 47 Tuc. We explore here the possibility that this dichotomy is due…
Recent gravitational microlensing observations predict a vast population of free-floating giant planets that outnumbers main sequence stars almost twofold. A frequently-invoked mechanism for generating this population is a dynamical…
The dominant mechanism for generating free-floating planets has so far remained elusive. One suggested mechanism is that planets are ejected from planetary systems due to planet-planet interactions. However, instability around a single star…
The detection of many extrasolar gas giants with high eccentricities indicates that dynamical instabilities in planetary systems are common. These instabilities can alter the orbits of gas giants as well as the orbits of terrestrial planets…
Many exoplanets are discovered in binary star systems in internal or in circumbinary orbits. Whether the planet can be habitable or not depends on the possibility to maintain liquid water on its surface, and therefore on the luminosity of…
Compared to the giant planets in the solar system, exoplanets have many remarkable properties such as the prevalence of giant planets on eccentric orbits and the presence of hot Jupiters. Planet-planet scattering (PPS) between giant planets…
Recent exoplanet surveys revealed that for solar-type stars, close-in Super-Earths are ubiquitous and many of them are in multi-planet systems. These systems are more compact than the Solar System's terrestrial planets. However, there have…
Most stars form in a clustered environment. Both single and binary stars will sometimes encounter planetary systems in such crowded environments. Encounter rates for binaries may be larger than for single stars, even for binary fractions as…
Recent advances have enabled the discovery of a population of potentially Earth-like planets, yet their orbital eccentricity, which governs their climate and provides clues about their origin and dynamical history, is still largely…
A significant fraction of unstable multiple planet systems likely scatter during the transitional disc phase as gas damping becomes ineffectual. Using an ensemble of FARGO hydrodynamic simulations and MERCURY n-body integrations, we…
The majority of binary star systems that host exoplanets will spend the first portion of their lives within a star-forming cluster that may drive dynamical evolution of the binary-planet system. We perform numerical simulations of S-type…