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A group of newly observed extreme trans-Neptunian objects exhibit unexpected orbital confinement, characterized by the alignment of orbital angular momentum vectors and apsidal lines. It is proposed that an undiscovered giant planet, named Planet-9, exists in the solar system's outer regions and causes this clustering. Initial studies suggested Planet-9 could have a mass of 15 Earth masses. However, such a massive planet strongly interacts with scattered disk objects (SDOs; 50 < a < 1000 au) and influences the orbits of short-period comets, resulting in orbital inclinations inconsistent with observations. This study models the formation and long-term evolution of trans-Neptunian object populations and the Oort cloud during the solar system's dynamical instability, using revised parameters for Planet-9. Simulations assume Planet-9 has a mass of 7.5 Earth masses, an inclination of ~20 degrees, a semi-major axis of ~600 au, and an eccentricity of ~0.3. Results suggest a less massive Planet-9 aligns with observed trans-Neptunian object inclinations and the number of ecliptic comets (D > 10 km). Distant Kuiper belt objects with 40 < q < 100 au and 200 < a < 500 au, particularly with significant inclinations, are more likely to align apsidally with Planet-9, with an anti-aligned-to-aligned ratio of 0.5-0.7. Lower inclination objects (<20 degrees) exhibit significant apsidal anti-alignment, with an anti-aligned-to-aligned ratio of 2-4. These findings offer a new observational direction to refine the search for Planet-9., Comment: Accepted in Icarus

The solar system planetary architecture has been proposed to be consistent with the terrestrial and giant planets forming from material rings at ~1 au and ~5 au, respectively. Here, we show that super-Earths and mini-Neptunes may share a similar formation pathway. In our simulations conducted with a disk alpha-viscosity of 4e-3, super-Earths accrete from rings of rocky material in the inner disk, growing predominantly via planetesimal accretion. Mini-Neptunes primarily originate from rings located beyond the water snowline, forming via pebble accretion. Our simulations broadly match the period-ratio distribution, the intra-system size uniformity, and the planet multiplicity distribution of exoplanets. The radius valley constrains the typical total mass available for rocky planet formation to be less than 3-6 Earth masses. Our results predict that planets at ~1 au in systems with close-in super-Earths and mini-Neptunes are predominantly water-rich. Though relatively uncommon, at ~1% level, such systems might also host rocky Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone that underwent late giant impacts, akin to the Moon-forming event., Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters

The origins of Uranus and Neptune are not fully understood. Their inclined rotation axes -- obliquities -- suggest that they experienced giant impacts during their formation histories. Simulations modeling their accretion from giant impacts among ~5 Earth masses planetary embryos -- with roughly unity impactors' mass ratios -- have been able to broadly match their current masses, final mass ratio, and obliquity. However, due to angular momentum conservation, planets produced in these impacts tend to rotate too fast, compared to Uranus and Neptune. One potential solution for this problem consists of invoking instead collisions of objects with large mass ratios (e.g. a proto-Uranus with 13 Mearth and an embryo of 1 Mearth). Smooth-particle hydrodynamics simulations show that in this scenario final planets tend to have rotation periods more consistent with those of Uranus and Neptune. Here we performed a large suite of N-body numerical simulations modelling the formation of Uranus and Neptune to compare these different dynamical views. Our simulations start with a population of protoplanets and account for the effects of type-I migration, inclination and eccentricity tidal damping. Our results show that although scenarios allowing for large impactors' mass ratio favour slower rotating planets, the probability of occurring collisions in these specific simulations is significantly low. This is because gas tidal damping is relatively less efficient for low-mass embryos (<~1 Merath) and, consequently, such objects are mostly scattered by more massive objects (~13 Mearth) instead of colliding with them. Altogether, our results show that the probability of broadly matching the masses, mass ratio, and rotation periods of Uranus and Neptune in these two competing formation scenarios is broadly similar, within a factor of ~2, with overall probabilities of the order of ~0.1-1%., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Icarus

Determining the internal structure of Uranus is a key objective for planetary science. Knowledge of Uranus's bulk composition and the distribution of elements is crucial to understanding its origin and evolutionary path. In addition, Uranus represents a poorly understood class of intermediate-mass planets (intermediate in size between the relatively well studied terrestrial and gas giant planets), which appear to be very common in the Galaxy. As a result, a better characterization of Uranus will also help us to better understand exoplanets in this mass and size regime. Recognizing the importance of Uranus, a Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) workshop was held in September 2023 to investigate how we can improve our knowledge of Uranus's internal structure in the context of a future Uranus mission that includes an orbiter and a probe. The scientific goals and objectives of the recently released Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey were taken as our starting point. We reviewed our current knowledge of Uranus's interior and identified measurement and other mission requirements for a future Uranus spacecraft, providing more detail than was possible in the Decadal Survey's mission study and including new insights into the measurements to be made. We also identified important knowledge gaps to be closed with Earth-based efforts in the near term that will help guide the design of the mission and interpret the data returned., Comment: Study Report prepared for the W. M. Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS). Study title: Determining the Interior Structure of Uranus: A Case Study for Leveraging Cross-Discipline Science to Answer Tough Questions. Study dates: September 11-15, 2023. Team Leads: Mark Hofstadter, Ravit Helled, and David Stevenson

Migration is a key ingredient for the formation of close-in super-Earth and mini-Neptune systems, as it sets in which resonances planets can be trapped. Slower migration rates result in wider resonance configurations compared to higher migration rates. We investigate the influence of different migration rates, set by the disc's viscosity, on the structure of multi-planet systems growing by pebble accretion via N-body simulations. Planets in low viscosity environments migrate slower due to partial gap opening. Thus systems formed in low viscosity environments tend to have planets trapped in wider resonant configurations (typically 4:3, 3:2 and 2:1), compared to their high viscosity counterparts (mostly 7:6, 5:4 and 4:3 resonances). After gas disc dissipation, the damping forces cease and the systems can undergo instabilities, rearranging their configurations and breaking the resonance chains. The low viscosity discs naturally account for the resonant chains like Trappist-1, TOI-178 and Kepler-223, unlike high viscosity simulations which produce relatively more compact chains. About 95% of our low viscosity resonant chains became unstable, experiencing giant impacts. Dynamical instabilities in our low viscosity simulations are more violent than those of high viscosity simulations due to the effects of leftover external perturbers (P>200 days). About 50% of our final system ended with no planets within 200 days, while all our systems have remaining outer planets. We speculate that this process could be qualitatively consistent with the lack of inner planets in a large fraction of Sun-like stars. Systems produced in low viscosity simulations alone do not match the overall period ratio distribution of observations, but give a better match to the period distributions of chains, which may suggest that systems of super-Earths and mini-Neptunes form in natal discs with a diversity of viscosities., Comment: 10 pages, accepted by A&A

Our understanding of the process of terrestrial planet formation has grown markedly over the past 20 years, yet key questions remain. This review begins by first addressing the critical, earliest stage of dust coagulation and concentration. While classic studies revealed how objects that grow to $\sim$meter sizes are rapidly removed from protoplanetary disks via orbital decay (seemingly precluding growth to larger sizes), this chapter addresses how this is resolved in contemporary, streaming instability models that favor rapid planetesimal formation via gravitational collapse of solids in over-dense regions. Once formed, planetesimals grow into Mars-Earth-sized planetary embryos by a combination of pebble- and planetesimal accretion within the lifetime of the nebular disk. After the disk dissipates, these embryos typically experience a series of late giant impacts en route to attaining their final architectures. This review also highlights three different inner Solar System formation models that can match a number of empirical constraints, and also reviews ways that one or more might be ruled out in favor of another in the near future. These include (1) the Grand Tack, (2) the Early Instability and (3) Planet Formation from Rings. Additionally, this chapter discusses formation models for the closest known analogs to our own terrestrial planets: super-Earths and terrestrial exoplanets in systems also hosting gas giants. Finally, this review lays out a chain of events that may explain why the Solar System looks different than more than 99% of exoplanet systems., Comment: To be published in: Handbook of Exoplanets, 2nd Edition, Hans Deeg and Juan Antonio Belmonte (Eds. in Chief), Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature. 75 pages, 9 figures. This is an update of arXiv:1803.08830

How and where the first generation of inner solar system planetesimals formed remains poorly understood. Potential formation regions are the silicate condensation line and water-snowline of the solar protoplanetary disk. Whether the chemical compositions of these planetesimals align with accretion at the silicate condensation line (water-free and reduced) or water-snowline (water-bearing and oxidized) is, however, unknown. Here we use Fe/Ni and Fe/Co ratios of magmatic iron meteorites to quantify the oxidation states of the earliest planetesimals associated with non-carbonaceous (NC) and carbonaceous (CC) reservoirs, representing the inner and outer solar system, respectively. Our results show that the earliest NC planetesimals contained substantial amounts of oxidized Fe in their mantles (3-19 wt% FeO). In turn, we argue that this required the accretion of water-bearing materials into these NC planetesimals. The presence of substantial quantities of moderately and highly volatile elements in their parent cores is also inconsistent with their accretion at the silicate condensation line and favors instead their formation at or beyond the water-snowline. Similar oxidation states in the early-formed parent bodies of NC iron meteorites and those of NC achondrites and chondrites with diverse accretion ages suggests that the formation of oxidized planetesimals from water-bearing materials was widespread in the early history of the inner solar system., Comment: 28 pages, 3 main figures, 6 Extended data figures, 4 Extended data tables

A systematic, population-level discrepancy exists between the densities of exoplanets whose masses have been measured with transit timing variations (TTVs) versus those measured with radial velocities (RVs). Since the TTV planets are predominantly nearly resonant, it is still unclear whether the discrepancy is attributed to detection biases or to astrophysical differences between the nearly resonant and non resonant planet populations. We defined a controlled, unbiased sample of 36 sub-Neptunes characterised by Kepler, TESS, HARPS, and ESPRESSO. We found that their density depends mostly on the resonant state of the system, with a low probability (of $0.002_{-0.001}^{+0.010}$) that the mass of (nearly) resonant planets is drawn from the same underlying population as the bulk of sub-Neptunes. Increasing the sample to 133 sub-Neptunes reveals finer details: the densities of resonant planets are similar and lower than non-resonant planets, and both the mean and spread in density increase for planets that are away from resonance. This trend is also present in RV-characterised planets alone. In addition, TTVs and RVs have consistent density distributions for a given distance to resonance. We also show that systems closer to resonances tend to be more co-planar than their spread-out counterparts. These observational trends are also found in synthetic populations, where planets that survived in their original resonant configuration retain a lower density; whereas less compact systems have undergone post-disc giant collisions that increased the planet's density, while expanding their orbits. Our findings reinforce the claim that resonant systems are archetypes of planetary systems at their birth.

PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) is ESA's M3 mission designed to detect and characterise extrasolar planets and perform asteroseismic monitoring of a large number of stars. PLATO will detect small planets (down to <2 R_(Earth)) around bright stars (<11 mag), including terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars. With the complement of radial velocity observations from the ground, planets will be characterised for their radius, mass, and age with high accuracy (5 %, 10 %, 10 % for an Earth-Sun combination respectively). PLATO will provide us with a large-scale catalogue of well-characterised small planets up to intermediate orbital periods, relevant for a meaningful comparison to planet formation theories and to better understand planet evolution. It will make possible comparative exoplanetology to place our Solar System planets in a broader context. In parallel, PLATO will study (host) stars using asteroseismology, allowing us to determine the stellar properties with high accuracy, substantially enhancing our knowledge of stellar structure and evolution. The payload instrument consists of 26 cameras with 12cm aperture each. For at least four years, the mission will perform high-precision photometric measurements. Here we review the science objectives, present PLATO's target samples and fields, provide an overview of expected core science performance as well as a description of the instrument and the mission profile at the beginning of the serial production of the flight cameras. PLATO is scheduled for a launch date end 2026. This overview therefore provides a summary of the mission to the community in preparation of the upcoming operational phases.

The dynamical architecture and compositional diversity of the asteroid belt strongly constrain planet formation models. Recent Solar System formation models have shown that the asteroid belt may have been born empty and later filled with objects from the inner ($<$2~au) and outer regions (>5 au) of the solar system. In this work, we focus on the implantation of inner solar system planetesimals into the asteroid belt - envisioned to represent S and/or E- type asteroids - during the late-stage accretion of the terrestrial planets. It is widely accepted that the solar system's giant planets formed in a more compact orbital configuration and evolved to their current dynamical state due to a planetary dynamical instability. In this work, we explore how the implantation efficiency of asteroids from the terrestrial region correlates with the timing of the giant planet instability, which has proven challenging to constrain. We carried out a suite of numerical simulations of the accretion of terrestrial planets considering different initial distributions of planetesimals in the terrestrial region and dynamical instability times. Our simulations show that a giant planet dynamical instability occurring at $t\gtrapprox5$ Myr -- relative to the time of the sun's natal disk dispersal -- is broadly consistent with the current asteroid belt, allowing the total mass carried out by S-complex type asteroids to be implanted into the belt from the terrestrial region. Finally, we conclude that an instability that occurs coincident with the gas disk dispersal is either inconsistent with the empty asteroid belt scenario, or may require that the gas disk in the inner solar system have dissipated at least a few Myr earlier than the gas in the outer disk (beyond Jupiter's orbit)., Comment: Under review in Icarus

The asteroid Athor, residing today in the inner main asteroid belt, has been recently associated as the source of EL enstatite meteorites to Earth. It has been argued that Athor formed in the terrestrial region -- as indicated by similarity in isotopic compositions between Earth and EL meteorites -- and was implanted in the belt $\gtrsim$60 Myr after the formation of the solar system. A recently published study modelling Athor's implantation in the belt (Avdellidou et al 2024) further concluded, using an idealized set of numerical simulations, that Athor cannot have been scattered from the terrestrial region and implanted at its current location unless the giant planet dynamical instability occurred {\em after} Athor's implantation ($\gtrsim$60~Myr). In this work, we revisit this problem with a comprehensive suite of dynamical simulations of the implantation of asteroids into the belt during the terrestrial planet accretion. We find that Athor-like objects can in fact be implanted into the belt long after the giant planets' dynamical instability. The probability of implanting Athor analogs when the instability occurs at $\lesssim15$~Myr is at most a factor of $\sim$2 lower than that of an instability occurring at $\sim100$~Myr after the solar system formation. Moreover, Athor's implantation can occur up to $\gtrsim$100 Myr after the giant planet instability. We conclude that Athor's link to EL meteorites does not constrain the timing of the solar system's dynamical instability., Comment: Submitted. Comments welcome

The main asteroid belt (MAB) is known to be primarily composed of objects from two distinct taxonomic classes, generically defined here as S- and C-complex. The former probably originated from the inner solar system (interior to Jupiter's orbit), while the latter probably from the outer solar system. Following this definition, (4) Vesta, a V-type residing in the inner MAB (a < 2.5 au), is the sole D > 500 km object akin to S-complex that potentially formed in-situ. This provides a useful constraint on the number of D > 500 km bodies that could have formed, or grown, within the primordial MAB. In this work we numerically simulate the accretion of objects in the MAB region during the time when gas in the protoplanetary disk still existed, while assuming different MAB primordial masses. We then accounted for the depletion of that population happening after gas disk dispersal. In our analysis, we subdivided the MAB into five sub-regions and showed that the depletion factor varies throughout the MAB. This results in uneven radial- and size-dependent depletion of the MAB. We show that the MAB primordial mass has to be $\lesssim$ 2.14$\times$10$^{-3}$ Earth masses. Larger primordial masses would lead to the accretion of tens-to-thousands of S-complex objects with D > 500 km in the MAB. Such large objects would survive depletion even in the outer sub-regions (a > 2.5 au), thus being inconsistent with observations. Our results also indicate that S-complex objects with D > 200-300 km, including (4) Vesta, are likely to be terrestrial planetesimals implanted into the MAB rather than formed in-situ., Comment: Accepted for publication in PSJ, 23 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables

The origins of carbonaceous asteroids in the asteroid belt is not fully understood. The leading hypothesis is that they were not born at their current location but instead implanted into the asteroid belt early in the Solar System history. We investigate how the migration and growth of Jupiter and Saturn in their natal disk impact nearby planetesimals and subsequent planetesimal implantation into the asteroid belt. We account for the effects of surface ablation of planetesimals caused by thermal and frictional heating between the gas-disk medium and planetesimal surface, when planetesimals travel through the gas disk. We have performed simulations considering planetesimals of different compositions as water-ice rich planetesimals, water-ice poor planetesimals, organic-rich planetesimals, and fayalite-rich planetesimals. Our findings indicate that, regardless of the migration history of the giant planets, water-ice rich, organic-rich, and fayalite-rich planetesimals implanted into the asteroid belt generally experience surface ablation during implantation in the asteroid belt, shrinking in size. Planetesimals with enstatite-like compositions were inconsequential to surface ablation, preserving their original sizes. By assuming an initial planetesimal size-frequency distribution, our results show that -- under the effects of surface ablation -- the planetesimal population implanted into the asteroid belt shows a SFD slope slightly steeper than that of the initial one. This holds true for all migration histories of the giant planets considered in this work, but for the Grand-Tack model where the SFD slope remains broadly unchanged. Altogether, our results suggest that the largest C-type asteroids in the asteroid belt may have been born bigger. High-degree surface ablation during implantation into the asteroid belt may have even exposed the cores of early differentiated C-type planetesimals.

Dynamical instabilities among giant planets are thought to be nearly ubiquitous, and culminate in the ejection of one or more planets into interstellar space. Here we perform N-body simulations of dynamical instabilities while accounting for torques from the galactic tidal field. We find that a fraction of planets that would otherwise have been ejected are instead trapped on very wide orbits analogous to those of Oort cloud comets. The fraction of ejected planets that are trapped ranges from 1-10%, depending on the initial planetary mass distribution. The local galactic density has a modest effect on the trapping efficiency and the orbital radii of trapped planets. The majority of Oort cloud planets survive for Gyr timescales. Taking into account the demographics of exoplanets, we estimate that one in every 200-3000 stars could host an Oort cloud planet. This value is likely an overestimate, as we do not account for instabilities that take place at early enough times to be affected by their host stars' birth cluster, or planet stripping from passing stars. If the Solar System's dynamical instability happened after birth cluster dissolution, there is a ~7% chance that an ice giant was captured in the Sun's Oort cloud., Comment: MNRAS Letters, in press. Blog post about paper at https://planetplanet.net/2023/06/21/oort-cloud-exoplanets/

Observations point to a correlation between outer giants and inner sub-Neptunes, unexplained by simulations so far. We utilize N-body simulations including pebble and gas accretion as well as planetary migration to investigate how the gas accretion rates influence the formation of systems of inner sub-Neptunes and outer gas giants as well as the eccentricity distribution of the outer giant planets. Less efficient envelope contraction rates allow a more efficient formation of systems with inner sub-Neptunes and outer giants. This is caused by the fact that the cores formed in the inner disc are too small to accrete large envelopes and only cores growing in the outer disc can become giants. As a result, instabilities between the outer giant planets do not necessarily destroy the inner systems of sub-Neptunes unlike simulations where giant planets can form closer in. Our simulations show that up to 50% of the systems of cold Jupiters could have inner sub-Neptunes, in agreement with observations. Our simulations show a good agreement with the eccentricity distribution of giants, even though we find a slight mismatch to the mass and semi-major axes distributions. Synthetic transit observations of the inner systems (r<0.7 AU) reveal an excellent match to the Kepler observations, where our simulations match the period ratios of adjacent planet pairs. Thus, the breaking the chains model for super-Earth and sub-Neptune formation remains consistent with observations even when outer giant planets are present. However, simulations with outer giant planets produce more systems with mostly only one inner planet and with larger eccentricities, in contrast to simulations without outer giants. We thus predict that systems with truly single close-in planets are more likely to host outer gas giants and we consequently suggest RV follow-up observations of these systems to constrain the formation pathway., Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication by A&A, now with language correction

Co-orbital systems contain two or more bodies sharing the same orbit around a planet or star. The best-known flavors of co-orbital systems are tadpoles (in which two bodies' angular separations oscillate about the L4/L5 Lagrange points $60^\circ$ apart) and horseshoes (with two bodies periodically exchanging orbital energy to trace out a horseshoe shape in a co-rotating frame). Here, we use N-body simulations to explore the parameter space of many-planet horseshoe systems. We show that up to 24 equal-mass, Earth-mass planets can share the same orbit at 1 au, following a complex pattern in which neighboring planets undergo horseshoe oscillations. We explore the dynamics of horseshoe constellations, and show that they can remain stable for billions of years and even persist through their stars' post-main sequence evolution. With sufficient observations, they can be identified through their large-amplitude, correlated transit timing variations. Given their longevity and exotic orbital architectures, horseshoe constellations may represent potential SETI beacons., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures. Published in MNRAS. YouTube playlist with animations of horseshoe constellation systems here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLelMZVM3ka3F335LGLxkxrD1ieiLJYQ5N . Blog post here: https://planetplanet.net/2023/04/20/constellations-of-co-orbital-planets/

In co-orbital planetary systems, two or more planets share the same orbit around their star. Here we test the dynamical stability of co-orbital rings of planets perturbed by outside forces. We test two setups: i) 'stationary' rings of planets that, when unperturbed, remain equally-spaced along their orbit; and ii) horseshoe constellation systems, in which planets are continually undergoing horseshoe librations with their immediate neighbors. We show that a single rogue planet crossing the planets' orbit more massive than a few lunar masses (0.01-0.04 Earth masses) systematically disrupts a co-orbital ring of 6, 9, 18, or 42 Earth-mass planets located at 1 au. Stationary rings are more resistant to perturbations than horseshoe constellations, yet when perturbed they can transform into stable horseshoe constellation systems. Given sufficient time, any co-orbital ring system will be perturbed into either becoming a horseshoe constellation or complete destabilization., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Re-submitted to MNRAS. Blog post about co-orbital constellations here: https://planetplanet.net/2023/04/20/constellations-of-co-orbital-planets/

The spin-orbit obliquity of a planetary system constraints its formation history. A large obliquity may either indicate a primordial misalignment between the star and its gaseous disk or reflect the effect of different mechanisms tilting planetary systems after formation. Observations and statistical analysis suggest that system of planets with sizes between 1 and 4 R$_{\oplus}$ have a wide range of obliquities ($\sim0-30^{\circ}$), and that single- and multi-planet transiting have statistically indistinguishable obliquity distributions. Here, we revisit the ``breaking the chains'' formation model with focus in understanding the origin of spin-orbit obliquities. This model suggests that super-Earths and mini-Neptunes migrate close to their host stars via planet-disk gravitational interactions, forming chain of planets locked in mean-motion resonances. After gas-disk dispersal, about 90-99\% of these planetary systems experience dynamical instabilities, which spread the systems out. Using synthetic transit observations, we show that if planets are born in disks where the disk angular momentum is virtually aligned with the star's rotation spin, their final obliquity distributions peak at about $\sim$5 degrees or less, and the obliquity distributions of single and multi-planet transiting systems are statistically distinct. By treating the star-disk alignment as a free-parameter, we show that the obliquity distributions of single and multi-planet transiting systems only become statistically indistinguishable if planets are assumed to form in primordially misaligned natal disks with a ``tilt'' distribution peaking at $\gtrsim$10-20 deg. We discuss the origin of these misalignments in the context of star formation and potential implications of this scenario for formation models., Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Water condensed as ice beyond the water snowline, the location in the Sun's natal gaseous disk where temperatures were below 170 K. As the disk evolved and cooled, the snowline moved inwards. A low temperature in the terrestrial planet-forming region is unlikely to be the origin of water on the planets, and the distinct isotopic compositions of planetary objects formed in the inner and outer disks suggest limited early mixing of inner and outer Solar System materials. Water in our terrestrial planets has rather been derived from H-bearing materials indigenous to the inner disk and delivered by water-rich planetesimals formed beyond the snowline and scattered inwards during the growth, migration, and dynamical evolution of the giant planets.

The size frequency distribution of exoplanet radii between 1 and 4$R_{\oplus}$ is bimodal with peaks at $\sim$1.4 $R_{\oplus}$ and $\sim$2.4 $R_{\oplus}$, and a valley at $\sim$1.8$R_{\oplus}$. This radius valley separates two classes of planets -- usually referred to as "super-Earths" and "mini-Neptunes" -- and its origin remains debated. One model proposes that super-Earths are the outcome of photo-evaporation or core-powered mass-loss stripping the primordial atmospheres of the mini-Neptunes. A contrasting model interprets the radius valley as a dichotomy in the bulk compositions, where super-Earths are rocky planets and mini-Neptunes are water-ice rich worlds. In this work, we test whether the migration model is consistent with the radius valley and how it distinguishes these views. In the migration model, planets migrate towards the disk inner edge forming a chain of planets locked in resonant configurations. After the gas disk dispersal, orbital instabilities "break the chains" and promote late collisions. This model broadly matches the period-ratio and planet-multiplicity distributions of Kepler planets, and accounts for resonant chains such as TRAPPIST-1, Kepler-223, and TOI-178. Here, by combining the outcome of planet formation simulations with compositional mass-radius relationships, and assuming complete loss of primordial H-rich atmospheres in late giant-impacts, we show that the migration model accounts for the exoplanet radius valley and the intra-system uniformity ("peas-in-a-pod") of Kepler planets. Our results suggest that planets with sizes of $\sim$1.4 $R_{\oplus}$ are mostly rocky, whereas those with sizes of $\sim$2.4 $R_{\oplus}$ are mostly water-ice rich worlds. Our results do not support an exclusively rocky composition for the cores of mini-Neptunes., Comment: Accepted for publicationn in ApJL

Advances in computing power and numerical methodologies over the past several decades sparked a prolific output of dynamical investigations of the late stages of terrestrial planet formation. Among other peculiar inner solar system qualities, the ability of simulations to reproduce the small mass of Mars within the planets' geochemically inferred accretion timescale of <10 Myr after the appearance of calcium aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs) is arguably considered the gold standard for judging evolutionary hypotheses. At present, a number of independent models are capable of consistently generating Mars-like planets and simultaneously satisfying various important observational and geochemical constraints. However, all models must still account for the effects of the epoch of giant planet migration and orbital instability; an event which dynamical and cosmochemical constraints indicate occurred within the first 100 Myr after nebular gas dispersal. If the instability occurred in the first few Myr of this window, the disturbance might have affected the bulk of Mars' growth. In this manuscript, we turn our attention to a scenario where the instability took place after t=50 Myr. Specifically, we simulate the instability's effects on three nearly-assembled terrestrial systems that were generated via previous embryo accretion models and contain three large proto-planets with orbits interior to a collection of ~Mars-mass embryos and debris. While the instability consistently triggers a Moon-forming impact and efficiently removes excessive material from the Mars-region in our models, we find that our final systems are too dynamically excited and devoid of Mars and Mercury analogs. Thus, we conclude that, while possible, our scenario is far more improbable than one where the instability either occurred earlier, or at a time where Earth and Venus' orbits were far less dynamically excited., Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Icarus

The migration history of Jupiter in the sun's natal disk remains poorly constrained. Here we consider how Jupiter's migration affects small-body reservoirs and how this constrains its original orbital distance from the Sun. We study the implications of large-scale and inward radial migration of Jupiter for the inner solar system while considering the effects of collisional evolution of planetesimals. We use analytical prescriptions to simulate the growth and migration of Jupiter in the gas disk. We assume the existence of a planetesimal disk inside Jupiter's initial orbit. This planetesimal disk received an initial total mass and size-frequency distribution (SFD). Planetesimals feel the effects of aerodynamic gas drag and collide with one another, mostly while shepherded by the migrating Jupiter. Our main goal is to measure the amount of mass in planetesimals implanted into the main asteroid belt (MAB) and the SFD of the implanted population. We also monitor the amount of dust produced during planetesimal collisions. We find that the SFD of the planetesimal population implanted into the MAB tends to resemble that of the original planetesimal population interior to Jupiter. We also find that unless very little or no mass existed between 5 au and Jupiter's original orbit, it would be difficult to reconcile the current low mass of the MAB with the possibility that Jupiter migrated from distances beyond 15 au. This is because the fraction of the original disk mass that gets implanted into the MAB is very large. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results in terms of dust production to the so-called NC-CC isotopic dichotomy., Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters; In press

The Dwarf Planet Ceres revealed the presence of ammonia and other unique properties compared to other asteroids in the main belt which suggests that it was not formed in situ. We model the early dynamical evolution of the outer Solar System to study possible dynamical mechanisms to implant a Ceres-sized planetesimal in the asteroid belt from the trans-Saturnian region. We calculate that the fraction of the population of Ceres-sized planetesimals that are captured in the asteroid belt is in the range of 2.8e-5 to 1.2e-3 depending on the initial location in the outer planetesimal disk. The captured bodies have a 70% probability to have a semimajor axis between 2.5 and 3 au, a 33% probability to have an eccentricity smaller than 0.2 and a 45% probability to have an orbital inclination smaller than 10 degrees. Assuming the existence of 3,600 Ceres-size planetesimals in the inner part of the trans-Saturnian disk, consistent with the estimate of Nesvorny & Vokrouhlicky (2016) for the trans-Neptunian disk, our estimated capture probability and a final 80% depletion of the asteroid belt during the subsequent giant planet instability, lead to capture 1 Ceres in the asteroid belt, with a probability of 15%, 34%, and 51% to be located in the inner, middle and outer belt respectively.

Astronomical observations reveal that protoplanetary disks around young stars commonly have ring- and gap-like structures in their dust distributions. These features are associated with pressure bumps trapping dust particles at specific locations, which simulations show are ideal sites for planetesimal formation. Here we show that our Solar System may have formed from rings of planetesimals -- created by pressure bumps -- rather than a continuous disk. We model the gaseous disk phase assuming the existence of pressure bumps near the silicate sublimation line (at $T \sim$1400~K), water snowline (at $T \sim$170~K), and CO-snowline (at $T \sim$30~K). Our simulations show that dust piles up at the bumps and forms up to three rings of planetesimals: a narrow ring near 1~au, a wide ring between $\sim$3-4~au and $\sim$10-20~au, and a distant ring between $\sim$20~au and $\sim$45~au. We use a series of simulations to follow the evolution of the innermost ring and show how it can explain the orbital structure of the inner Solar System and provides a framework to explain the origins of isotopic signatures of Earth, Mars and different classes of meteorites. The central ring contains enough mass to explain the rapid growth of the giant planets' cores. The outermost ring is consistent with dynamical models of Solar System evolution proposing that the early Solar System had a primordial planetesimal disk beyond the current orbit of Uranus., Comment: Published in Nature Astronomy on Dec 30, 2021. Authors' version including Methods and Supplementary Information

The Trappist-1 system contains seven roughly Earth-sized planets locked in a multi-resonant orbital configuration, which has enabled precise measurements of the planets' masses and constrained their compositions. Here we use the system's fragile orbital structure to place robust upper limits on the planets' bombardment histories. We use N-body simulations to show how perturbations from additional objects can break the multi-resonant configuration by either triggering dynamical instability or simply removing the planets from resonance. The planets cannot have interacted with more than ${\sim 5\%}$ of an Earth mass (${M_\oplus}$) in planetesimals -- or a single rogue planet more massive than Earth's Moon -- without disrupting their resonant orbital structure. This implies an upper limit of ${10^{-4}}$ to ${10^{-2} M_\oplus}$ of late accretion on each planet since the dispersal of the system's gaseous disk. This is comparable to or less than the late accretion on Earth after the Moon-forming impact, and demonstrates that the Trappist-1 planets' growth was complete in just a few million years, roughly an order of magnitude faster than Earth's. Our results imply that any large water reservoirs on the Trappist-1 planets must have been incorporated during their formation in the gaseous disk., Comment: Published in Nature Astronomy (Nov 25, 2021). This is the authors' version including Methods and Supplementary Info

Planets between 1-4 Earth radii with orbital periods <100 days are strikingly common. The migration model proposes that super-Earths migrate inwards and pile up at the disk inner edge in chains of mean motion resonances. After gas disk dispersal, simulations show that super-Earth's gravitational interactions can naturally break their resonant configuration leading to a late phase of giant impacts. The instability phase is key to matching the orbital spacing of observed systems. Yet, most previous simulations have modelled collisions as perfect accretion events, ignoring fragmentation. In this work, we investigate the impact of imperfect accretion on the breaking the chains scenario. We performed N-body simulations starting from distributions of planetary embryos and modelling the effects of pebble accretion and migration in the gas disk. Our simulations also follow the long-term dynamical evolution of super-Earths after the gas disk dissipation. We compared the results of simulations where collisions are treated as perfect merging events with those where imperfect accretion and fragmentation are allowed. We concluded that the perfect accretion is a suitable approximation in this regime, from a dynamical point of view. Although fragmentation events are common, only ~10% of the system mass is fragmented during a typical "late instability phase", with fragments being mostly reacreted by surviving planets. This limited total mass in fragments proved to be insufficient to alter qualitatively the final system dynamical configuration -- e.g. promote strong dynamical friction or residual migration -- compared to simulations where fragmentation is neglected., Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures and 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

In a recent paper we proposed that the giant planets' primordial orbits may have been eccentric (~0.05), and used a suite of dynamical simulations to show outcomes of the giant planet instability that are consistent with their present-day orbits. In this follow-up investigation, we present more comprehensive simulations incorporating superior particle resolution, longer integration times, and eliminating our prior means of artificially forcing instabilities to occur at specified times by shifting a planets' position in its orbit. While we find that the residual phase of planetary migration only minimally alters the the planets' ultimate eccentricities, our work uncovers several intriguing outcomes in realizations where Jupiter and Saturn are born with extremely large eccentricities (~0.10 and ~0.25, respectively). In successful simulations, the planets' orbits damp through interactions with the planetesimal disk prior to the instability, thus loosely replicating the initial conditions considered in our previous work. Our results therefore suggest an even wider range of plausible evolutionary pathways are capable of replicating Jupiter and Saturn's modern orbital architecture., Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in Icarus

Mass-independent isotopic anomalies of carbonaceous and non-carbonaceous meteorites show a clear dichotomy suggesting an efficient separation of the inner and outer solar system. Observations show that ring-like structures in the distribution of mm-sized pebbles in protoplanetary disks are common. These structures are often associated with drifting pebbles being trapped by local pressure maxima in the gas disk. Similar structures may also have existed in the sun's natal disk, which could naturally explain the meteorite/planetary isotopic dichotomy. Here, we test the effects of a strong pressure bump in the outer disk (e.g. $\sim$5~au) on the formation of the inner solar system. We model dust coagulation and evolution, planetesimal formation, as well as embryo's growth via planetesimal and pebble accretion. Our results show that terrestrial embryos formed via planetesimal accretion rather than pebble accretion. In our model, the radial drift of pebbles foster planetesimal formation. However, once a pressure bump forms, pebbles in the inner disk are lost via drift before they can be efficiently accreted by embryos growing at $\gtrapprox$1~au. Embryos inside $\sim$0.5-1.0au grow relatively faster and can accrete pebbles more efficiently. However, these same embryos grow to larger masses so they should migrate inwards substantially, which is inconsistent with the current solar system. Therefore, terrestrial planets most likely accreted from giant impacts of Moon to roughly Mars-mass planetary embryos formed around $\gtrapprox$1.0~au. Finally, our simulations produce a steep radial mass distribution of planetesimals in the terrestrial region which is qualitatively aligned with formation models suggesting that the asteroid belt was born low-mass., Comment: Accepted in ApJ

The origins of the Galilean satellites - namely Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - is not fully understood yet. Here we use N-body numerical simulations to study the formation of Galilean satellites in a gaseous circumplanetary disk around Jupiter. Our model includes the effects of pebble accretion, gas-driven migration, and gas tidal damping and drag. Satellitesimals in our simulations first grow via pebble accretion and start to migrate inwards. When they reach the trap at the disk inner edge, scattering events and collisions take place promoting additional growth. Growing satellites eventually reach a multi-resonant configuration anchored at the disk inner edge. Our best match to the masses of the Galilean satellites is produced in simulations where the integrated pebble flux is 1e-3 MJ. These simulations typically produce between 3 and 5 satellites. In our best analogues, adjacent satellite pairs are all locked in 2:1 mean motion resonances. However, they have also moderately eccentric orbits (0.1), unlike the current real satellites. We propose that the Galilean satellites system is a primordial resonant chain, similar to exoplanet systems as TRAPPIST-1, Kepler-223, and TOI-178. Callisto was probably in resonance with Ganymede in the past but left this configuration - without breaking the Laplacian resonance - via divergent migration due to tidal planet-satellite interactions. These same effects further damped the orbital eccentricities of these satellites down to their current values (0.001). Our results support the hypothesis that Io and Europa were born with water-ice rich compositions and lost all/most of their water afterwards. Firmer constraints on the primordial compositions of the Galilean satellites are crucial to distinguish formation models., Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures

Observations of the population of cold Jupiter planets ($r>$1 AU) show that nearly all of these planets orbit their host star on eccentric orbits. For planets up to a few Jupiter masses, eccentric orbits are thought to be the outcome of planet-planet scattering events taking place after gas dispersal. We simulate the growth of planets via pebble and gas accretion as well as the migration of multiple planetary embryos in their gas disc. We then follow the long-term dynamical evolution of our formed planetary system up to 100 Myr after gas disc dispersal. We investigate the importance of the initial number of protoplanetary embryos and different damping rates of eccentricity and inclination during the gas phase for the final configuration of our planetary systems. We constrain our model by comparing the final dynamical structure of our simulated planetary systems to that of observed exoplanet systems. Our results show that the initial number of planetary embryos has only a minor impact on the final orbital eccentricity distribution of the giant planets, as long as damping of eccentricity and inclination is efficient. If damping is inefficient (slow), systems with a larger initial number of embryos harbor larger average eccentricities. In addition, for slow damping rates, we observe that scattering events already during the gas disc phase are common and that the giant planets formed in these simulations match the observed giant planet eccentricity distribution best. These simulations also show that massive giant planets (above Jupiter mass) on eccentric orbits are less likely to host inner super-Earths as these get lost during the scattering phase, while systems with less massive giant planets on nearly circular orbits should harbor systems of inner super-Earths. Finally, our simulations predict that giant planets are on average not single, but live in multi-planet systems., Comment: 25 pages, 18 figures, accepted by A&A, with language corrections

An episode of dynamical instability is thought to have sculpted the orbital structure of the outer solar system. When modeling this instability, a key constraint comes from Jupiter's fifth eccentric mode (quantified by its amplitude M55), which is an important driver of the solar system's secular evolution. Starting from commonly-assumed near-circular orbits, the present-day giant planets' architecture lies at the limit of numerically generated systems, and M55 is rarely excited to its true value. Here we perform a dynamical analysis of a large batch of artificially triggered instabilities, and test a variety of configurations for the giant planets' primordial orbits. In addition to more standard setups, and motivated by the results of modern hydrodynamical simulations of the giant planets' evolution within the primordial gaseous disk, we consider the possibility that Jupiter and Saturn emerged from the nebular gas locked in 2:1 resonance with non-zero eccentricities. We show that, in such a scenario, the modern Jupiter-Saturn system represents a typical simulation outcome, and M55 is commonly matched. Furthermore, we show that Uranus and Neptune's final orbits are determined by a combination of the mass in the primordial Kuiper belt and that of an ejected ice giant., Comment: 35 pages, 21 figures, 8 tables, accepted for publication in AJ

The origin of Uranus and Neptune remains a challenge for planet formation models. A potential explanation is that the planets formed from a population of a few planetary embryos with masses of a few Earth masses which formed beyond Saturn's orbit and migrated inwards. These embryos can collide and merge to form Uranus and Neptune. In this work we revisit this formation scenario and study the outcomes of such collisions using 3D hydrodynamical simulations. We investigate under what conditions the perfect-merging assumption is appropriate, and infer the planets' final masses, obliquities and rotation periods, as well as the presence of proto-satellite disks. We find that the total bound mass and obliquities of the planets formed in our simulations generally agree with N-body simulations therefore validating the perfect-merging assumption. The inferred obliquities, however, are typically different from those of Uranus and Neptune, and can be roughly matched only in a few cases. In addition, we find that in most cases the planets formed in this scenario rotate faster than Uranus and Neptune, close to break-up speed, and have massive disks. We therefore conclude that forming Uranus and Neptune in this scenario is challenging, and further research is required. We suggest that future planet formation models should aim to explain the various physical properties of the planets such as their masses, compositions, obliquities, rotation rates and satellite systems., Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, submitted to MNRAS, comments welcome

Some systems of close-in "super-Earths" contain five or more planets on non-resonant but compact and nearly coplanar orbits. The Kepler-11 system is an iconic representative of this class of system. It is challenging to explain their origins given that planet-disk interactions are thought to be essential to maintain such a high degree of coplanarity, yet these same interactions invariably cause planets to migrate into chains of mean motion resonances. Here we mine a large dataset of dynamical simulations of super-Earth formation by migration. These simulations match the observed period ratio distribution as long as the vast majority of planet pairs in resonance become dynamically unstable. When instabilities take place resonances are broken during a late phase of giant impacts, and typical surviving systems have planet pairs with significant mutual orbital inclinations. However, a subset of our unstable simulations matches the Kepler-11 system in terms of coplanarity, compactness, planet-multiplicity and non-resonant state. This subset have dynamical instability phases typically much shorter than ordinary systems. Unstable systems may keep a high degree of coplanarity post-instability if planets collide at very low orbital inclinations ($\lesssim1^\circ$) or if collisions promote efficient damping of orbital inclinations. If planetary scattering during the instability takes place at low orbital inclinations ($\text{i}\lesssim1^\circ$), orbital inclinations are barely increased by encounters before planets collide.When planetary scattering pumps orbital inclinations to higher values ($\gtrsim 1^\circ$) planets tend to collide at higher mutual orbital inclinations, but depending on the geometry of collisions mergers' orbital inclinations may be efficiently damped. Each of these formation pathways can produce analogues to the Kepler-11 system., Comment: Accepted by MNRAS, 9 pages, 10 figures, 1 appendix

The dynamical structure of the Solar System can be explained by a period of orbital instability experienced by the giant planets. While a late instability was originally proposed to explain the Late Heavy Bombardment, recent work favors an early instability. We model the early dynamical evolution of the outer Solar System to self-consistently constrain the most likely timing of the instability. We first simulate the dynamical sculpting of the primordial outer planetesimal disk during the accretion of Uranus and Neptune from migrating planetary embryos during the gas disk phase, and determine the separation between Neptune and the inner edge of the planetesimal disk. We performed simulations with a range of migration histories for Jupiter. We find that, unless Jupiter migrated inwards by 10 AU or more, the instability almost certainly happened within 100 Myr of the start of Solar System formation. There are two distinct possible instability triggers. The first is an instability that is triggered by the planets themselves, with no appreciable influence from the planetesimal disk. Of those, the median instability time is $\sim4$Myr. Among self-stable systems -- where the planets are locked in a resonant chain that remains stable in the absence of a planetesimal's disk-- our self-consistently sculpted planetesimal disks nonetheless trigger a giant planet instability with a median instability time of 37-62 Myr for a reasonable range of migration histories of Jupiter. The simulations that give the latest instability times are those that invoked long-range inward migration of Jupiter from 15 AU or beyond; however these simulations over-excited the inclinations of Kuiper belt objects and are inconsistent with the present-day Solar System. We conclude on dynamical grounds that the giant planet instability is likely to have occurred early in Solar System history., Comment: 46 pages, 26 figures, Article reference YICAR_113605, https://authors.elsevier.com/tracking/article/details.do?aid=113605&jid=YICAR&surname=Ribeiro

Modern astronomy has finally been able to observe protoplanetary disks in reasonable resolution and detail, unveiling the processes happening during planet formation. These observed processes are understood under the framework of disk-planet interaction, a process studied analytically and modeled numerically for over 40 years. Long a theoreticians' game, the wealth of observational data has been allowing for increasingly stringent tests of the theoretical models. Modeling efforts are crucial to support the interpretation of direct imaging analyses, not just for potential detections but also to put meaningful upper limits on mass accretion rates and other physical quantities in current and future large-scale surveys. This white paper addresses the questions of what efforts on the computational side are required in the next decade to advance our theoretical understanding, explain the observational data, and guide new observations. We identified the nature of accretion, ab initio planet formation, early evolution, and circumplanetary disks as major fields of interest in computational planet formation. We recommend that modelers relax the approximations of alpha-viscosity and isothermal equations of state, on the grounds that these models use flawed assumptions, even if they give good visual qualitative agreement with observations. We similarly recommend that population synthesis move away from 1D hydrodynamics. The computational resources to reach these goals should be developed during the next decade, through improvements in algorithms and the hardware for hybrid CPU/GPU clusters. Coupled with high angular resolution and great line sensitivity in ground based interferometers, ELTs and JWST, these advances in computational efforts should allow for large strides in the field in the next decade., Comment: White paper submitted to the Astro2020 decadal survey

Recent observations have found a valley in the size distribution of close-in super-Earths that is interpreted as a signpost that close-in super-Earths are mostly rocky in composition. However, new models predict that planetesimals should first form at the water ice line such that close-in planets are expected to have a significant water ice component. Here we investigate the water contents of super-Earths by studying the interplay between pebble accretion, planet migration and disc evolution. Planets' compositions are determined by their position relative to different condensation fronts (ice lines) throughout their growth. Migration plays a key role. Assuming that planetesimals start at or exterior to the water ice line ($r>r_{\rm H_2O}$), inward migration causes planets to leave the source region of icy pebbles and therefore to have lower final water contents than in discs with either outward migration or no migration. The water ice line itself moves inward as the disc evolves, and delivers water as it sweeps across planets that formed dry. The relative speed and direction of planet migration and inward drift of the water ice line is thus central in determining planets' water contents. If planet formation starts at the water ice line, this implies that hot close-in super-Earths (r<0.3 AU) with water contents of a few percent are a signpost of inward planet migration during the early gas phase. Hot super-Earths with larger water ice contents on the other hand, experienced outward migration at the water ice line and only migrated inwards after their formation was complete either because they become too massive to be contained in the region of outward migration or in chains of resonant planets. Measuring the water ice content of hot super-Earths may thus constrain their migration history., Comment: accepted by A&A, 12 pages

Protoplanetary disks are thought to be truncated at orbital periods of around 10 days. Therefore, origin of rocky short period planets with $P < 10$ days is a puzzle. We propose that many of these planets may form through the Type-I migration of planets locked into a chain of mutual mean motion resonances. We ran N-body simulations of planetary embryos embedded in a protoplanetary disk. The embryos experienced gravitational scatterings, collisions, disk torques, and dampening of orbital eccentricity and inclination. We then modelled Kepler observations of these planets using a forward model of both the transit probability and the detection efficiency of the Kepler pipeline. We found that planets become locked into long chains of mean motion resonances that migrate in unison. When the chain reaches the edge of the disk, the inner planets are pushed past the edge due to the disk torques acting on the planets farther out in the chain. Our simulated systems successfully reproduce the observed period distribution of short period Kepler planets between 1 and 2 $R_\oplus$. However, we obtain fewer closely packed short period planets than in the Kepler sample. Our results provide valuable insight into the planet formation process, and suggests that resonance locks, migration, and dynamical instabilities play important roles the the formation and evolution of close-in small exoplanets., Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, submitted to MNRAS

Giant planets migrate though the protoplanetary disc as they grow. We investigate how the formation of planetary systems depends on the radial flux of pebbles through the protoplanetary disc and on the planet migration rate. Our N-body simulations confirm previous findings that Jupiter-like planets in orbits outside the water ice line originate from embryos starting out at 20-40 AU when using nominal type-I and type-II migration rates and a pebble flux of 100-200 Earth masses per million years, enough to grow Jupiter within the lifetime of the solar nebula. The planetary embryos placed up to 30AU migrate into the inner system (r<1AU) and form super-Earths or hot and warm gas giants, producing systems that are inconsistent with the configuration of the solar system, but consistent with some exoplanetary systems. We also explore slower migration rates which allow the formation of gas giants from embryos originating from the 5-10AU region, which are stranded exterior to 1 AU at the end of the gas-disc phase. We identify a pebble flux threshold below which migration dominates and moves the planetary core to the inner disc, where the pebble isolation mass is too low for the planet to accrete gas efficiently. Giant planet growth requires a sufficiently-high pebble flux to enable growth to out-compete migration. Even higher pebble fluxes produce systems with multiple gas giants. We show that planetary embryos starting interior to 5AU do not grow into gas giants, even if migration is slow and the pebble flux is large. Instead they grow to the mass regime of super-Earths. This stunted growth is caused by the low pebble isolation mass in the inner disc and is independent of the pebble flux. Additionally we show that the long term evolution of our formed planetary systems can produce systems with hot super-Earths and outer gas giants as well as systems of giants on eccentric orbits (abridged)., Comment: 25 pages, accepted by A&A, see companion papers by Izidoro et al. (2019) and Lambrechts et al. (2019)

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 interaction to study the formation of super-Earth systems. We show that the integrated pebble mass reservoir creates a bifurcation between hot super-Earths or hot-Neptunes ($\lesssim15M_{\oplus}$) and super-massive planetary cores potentially able to become gas giant planets ($\gtrsim15M_{\oplus}$). Simulations with moderate pebble fluxes grow multiple super-Earth-mass planets that migrate inwards and pile up at the inner edge of the disk forming long resonant chains. We follow the long-term dynamical evolution of these systems and use the period ratio distribution of observed planet-pairs to constrain our model. Up to $\sim$95\% of resonant chains become dynamically unstable after the gas disk dispersal, leading to a phase of late collisions that breaks the original resonant configurations. Our simulations naturally match observations when they produce a dominant fraction ($\gtrsim95\%$) of unstable systems with a sprinkling ($\lesssim5\%$) of stable resonant chains (the Trappist-1 system represents one such example). Our results demonstrate that super-Earth systems are inherently multiple (${\rm N\geq2}$) and that the observed excess of single-planet transits is a consequence of the mutual inclinations excited by the planet--planet instability. In simulations in which planetary seeds are initially distributed in the inner and outer disk, close-in super-Earths (abridged)., Comment: Accepted in A&A, version including language editing

Super-Earths are found in tighter orbits than the Earth's around more than one third of main sequence stars. It has been proposed that super-Earths are scaled-up terrestrial planets that formed similarly, through mutual accretion of planetary embryos, but in discs much denser than the solar protoplanetary disc. We argue instead that terrestrial planets and super-Earths have two distinct formation pathways that are regulated by the disc's pebble reservoir. Through numerical integrations, which combine pebble accretion and N-body gravity between embryos, we show that a difference of a factor of two in the pebble mass-flux is enough to change the evolution from the terrestrial to the super-Earth growth mode. If the pebble mass-flux is small, then the initial embryos within the ice line grow slowly and do not migrate substantially, resulting in a widely spaced population of Mars-mass embryos when the gas disc dissipates. Without gas being present, the embryos become unstable and a small number of terrestrial planets are formed by mutual collisions. The final terrestrial planets are at most 5 Earth masses. Instead, if the pebble mass-flux is high, then the initial embryos within the ice line rapidly become sufficiently massive to migrate through the gas disc. Embryos concentrate at the inner edge of the disc and growth accelerates through mutual merging. This leads to the formation of a system of closely spaced super-Earths in the 5 to 20 Earth-mass range, bounded by the pebble isolation mass. Generally, instabilities of these super-Earth systems after the disappearance of the gas disc trigger additional merging events and dislodge the system from resonant chains. The pebble flux - which controls the transition between the two growth modes - may be regulated by the initial reservoir of solids in the disc or the presence of more distant giant planets that can halt the radial flow of pebbles., Comment: Accepted in A&A

Exoplanet surveys have confirmed one of humanity's (and all teenagers') worst fears: we are weird. If our Solar System were observed with present-day Earth technology -- to put our system and exoplanets on the same footing -- Jupiter is the only planet that would be detectable. The statistics of exo-Jupiters indicate that the Solar System is unusual at the ~1% level among Sun-like stars (or ~0.1% among all stars). But why are we different? Successful formation models for both the Solar System and exoplanet systems rely on two key processes: orbital migration and dynamical instability. Systems of close-in super-Earths or sub-Neptunes require substantial radial inward motion of solids either as drifting mm- to cm-sized pebbles or migrating Earth-mass or larger planetary embryos. We argue that, regardless of their formation mode, the late evolution of super-Earth systems involves migration into chains of mean motion resonances, generally followed by instability when the disk dissipates. This pattern is likely also ubiquitous in giant planet systems. We present three models for inner Solar System formation -- the low-mass asteroid belt, Grand Tack, and Early Instability models -- each invoking a combination of migration and instability. We identify bifurcation points in planetary system formation. We present a series of events to explain why our Solar System is so weird. Jupiter's core must have formed fast enough to quench the growth of Earth's building blocks by blocking the flux of inward-drifting pebbles. The large Jupiter/Saturn mass ratio is rare among giant exoplanets but may be required to maintain Jupiter's wide orbit. The giant planets' instability must have been gentle, with no close encounters between Jupiter and Saturn, also unusual in the larger (exoplanet) context. Our Solar System system is thus the outcome of multiple unusual, but not unheard of, events., Comment: Abstract abridged. Chapter to appear in Planetary Astrobiology (Editors: Victoria Meadows, Giada Arney, David Des Marais, and Britney Schmidt). 35 pages, 6 figures. Updated references

The main asteroid belt (MB) is low in mass but dynamically excited. Here we propose a new mechanism to excite the MB during the giant planet ('Nice model') instability, which is expected to have featured repeated close encounters between Jupiter and one or more ice giants ('Jumping Jupiter' -- JJ). We show that, when Jupiter temporarily reaches a high enough level of excitation, both in eccentricity and inclination it induces strong forced vectors of eccentricity and inclination across the MB region. Because during the JJ instability Jupiter's orbit `jumps' around, the forced vectors keep changing both in magnitude and phase throughout the whole MB region. The entire cold primordial MB is thus excited as a natural outcome of the JJ instability. The level of such an excitation, however, is typically larger than the current orbital excitation observed in the MB. We show that the subsequent evolution of the Solar System is capable of reshaping the resultant over-excited MB to its present day orbital state, and that a strong mass depletion ($\sim$90$\%$) is associated to the JJ instability phase and its subsequent evolution throughout the age of the Solar System., Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

A leading model for the origin of super-Earths proposes that planetary embryos migrate inward and pile up on close-in orbits. As large embryos are thought to preferentially form beyond the snow line, this naively predicts that most super-Earths should be very water-rich. Here we show that the shortest-period planets formed in the migration model are often purely rocky. The inward migration of icy embryos through the terrestrial zone accelerates the growth of rocky planets via resonant shepherding. We illustrate this process with a simulation that provided a match to the Kepler-36 system of two planets on close orbits with very different densities. In the simulation, two super-Earths formed in a Kepler-36-like configuration; the inner planet was pure rock while the outer one was ice-rich. We conclude from a suite of simulations that the feeding zones of close-in super-Earths are likely to be broad and disconnected from their final orbital radii., Comment: MNRAS Letters, in press. Small update to references. Animation from Figs 1 and 2 viewable at https://youtu.be/uEK6FTj6s7c

We present empirical evidence, supported by a planet formation model, to show that the curve $R/R_\oplus = 1.05\,(F/F_\oplus)^{0.11}$ approximates the location of the so-called photo-evaporation valley. Planets below that curve are likely to have experienced complete photo-evaporation, and planets just above it appear to have inflated radii; thus we identify a new population of inflated super-Earths and mini-Neptunes. Our N-body simulations are set within an evolving protoplanetary disk and include prescriptions for orbital migration, gas accretion, and atmospheric loss due to giant impacts. Our simulated systems broadly match the sizes and periods of super-Earths in the Kepler catalog. They also reproduce the relative sizes of adjacent planets in the same system, with the exception of planet pairs that straddle the photo-evaporation valley. This latter group is populated by planet pairs with either very large or very small size ratios ($R_{\rm out} / R_{\rm in} \gg 1$ or $R_{\rm out} / R_{\rm in} \ll 1$) and a dearth of size ratios near unity. It appears that this feature could be reproduced if the planet outside the photo-evaporation valley (typically the outer planet, but some times not) has its atmosphere significantly expanded by stellar irradiation. This new population of planets may be ideal targets for future transit spectroscopy observations with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope., Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, accepted to ApJ

The past decade has seen major progress in our understanding of terrestrial planet formation. Yet key questions remain. In this review we first address the growth of 100 km-scale planetesimals as a consequence of dust coagulation and concentration, with current models favoring the streaming instability. Planetesimals grow into Mars-sized (or larger) planetary embryos by a combination of pebble- and planetesimal accretion. Models for the final assembly of the inner Solar System must match constraints related to the terrestrial planets and asteroids including their orbital and compositional distributions and inferred growth timescales. Two current models -- the Grand-Tack and low-mass (or empty) primordial asteroid belt scenarios -- can each match the empirical constraints but both have key uncertainties that require further study. We present formation models for close-in super-Earths -- the closest current analogs to our own terrestrial planets despite their very different formation histories -- and for terrestrial exoplanets in gas giant systems. We explain why super-Earth systems cannot form in-situ but rather may be the result of inward gas-driven migration followed by the disruption of compact resonant chains. The Solar System is unlikely to have harbored an early system of super-Earths; rather, Jupiter's early formation may have blocked the ice giants' inward migration. Finally, we present a chain of events that may explain why our Solar System looks different than more than 99\% of exoplanet systems., Comment: Review to appear as a chapter in the "Handbook of Exoplanets", ed. H. Deeg & J.A. Belmonte

The planetary building blocks that formed in the terrestrial planet region were likely very dry, yet water is comparatively abundant on Earth. We review the various mechanisms proposed for the origin of water on the terrestrial planets. Various in-situ mechanisms have been suggested, which allow for the incorporation of water into the local planetesimals in the terrestrial planet region or into the planets themselves from local sources, although all of those mechanisms have difficulties. Comets have also been proposed as a source, although there may be problems fitting isotopic constraints, and the delivery efficiency is very low, such that it may be difficult to deliver even a single Earth ocean of water this way. The most promising route for water delivery is the accretion of material from beyond the snow line, similar to carbonaceous chondrites, that is scattered into the terrestrial planet region as the planets are growing. Two main scenarios are discussed in detail. First is the classical scenario in which the giant planets begin roughly in their final locations and the disk of planetesimals and embryos in the terrestrial planet region extends all the way into the outer asteroid belt region. Second is the Grand Tack scenario, where early inward and outward migration of the giant planets implants material from beyond the snow line into the asteroid belt and terrestrial planet region, where it can be accreted by the growing planets. Sufficient water is delivered to the terrestrial planets in both scenarios. While the Grand Tack scenario provides a better fit to most constraints, namely the small mass of Mars, planets may form too fast in the nominal case discussed here. This discrepancy may be reduced as a wider range of initial conditions is explored. Finally, we discuss several more recent models that may have important implications for water delivery to the terrestrial planets., Comment: Accepted Jan 17, 2018 for publication in Space Science Reviews under the topical collection The Delivery of Water to Protoplanets, Planets and Satellites and in an ISSI Space Science Series book of the same title

Fomalhaut A is among the most well-studied nearby stars and has been discovered to possess a putative planetary object as well as a remarkable eccentric dust belt. This eccentric dust belt has often been interpreted as the dynamical signature of one or more planets that elude direct detection. However, the system also contains two other stellar companions residing ~100,000 AU from Fomalhaut A. We have designed a new symplectic integration algorithm to model the evolution of Fomalhaut A's planetary dust belt in concert with the dynamical evolution of its stellar companions to determine if these companions are likely to have generated the dust belt's morphology. Using our numerical simulations, we find that close encounters between Fomalhaut A and B are expected, with a ~25% probability that the two stars have passed within at least 400 AU of each other at some point. Although the outcomes of such encounter histories are extremely varied, these close encounters nearly always excite the eccentricity of Fomalhaut A's dust belt and occasionally yield morphologies very similar to the observed belt. With these results, we argue that close encounters with Fomalhaut A's stellar companions should be considered a plausible mechanism to explain its eccentric belt, especially in the absence of detected planets capable of sculpting the belt's morphology. More broadly, we can also conclude from this work that very wide binary stars may often generate asymmetries in the stellar debris disks they host., Comment: Accepted to MNRAS, 22 pages, 15 figures, 2 appendices