Doug LIN : UC, Santa Cruz
The early stages of planet formation in evolving discs
Planets are formed in protostellar disks which processed all the material that was accreted onto their host stars. The condensation and growth of dust, the build up of planetesimals, the emergence of protoplanetary embryos, and the formation of gas giants will be discussed in the context of evolving protostellar disks. We show that 1) the location of the snow line evolves extensively, 2) protoplanetary embryos' type I migration self regulates the retention efficiency of heavy elements, 3) gas giants emerge only after the surface density of the gas has reduced below that of a minimum mass nebula, 4) the emergence of a gas giant promotes the formation of additional planets around the same host stars, 5) dynamical instability leads to the excitation of gas giants' eccentricity, 6) gas giants orbits migrate on a similar time scale as the disk depletion, 7) the depletion of the disk gas can lead to sweeping secular resonances of eccentricity gas giants and dynamical instability of residual proto terrestrial planetary embryos. We discuss the correlation between metallicity of the disk and the formation probability of gas giants as well as present predictions on the planetary properties as functions of stellar masses and the possible presence of hot Earth around the host stars of hot Jupiters.Last modified: Sun Jul 9 17:53:11 2006