8 papers
Geometry of dust rings in protoplanetary disks: the case of LkCa 15
Yansong Qian, Yanqin Wu
Dust properties in proto-planetary disks shape the pathways for planet formation. Here, we present a method to measure these properties in moderately inclined dust rings. Our metho…
Rattle-and-Break: the Impact of Planetesimal Scattering on Super-Earth Resonant Chains
Sam Hadden, Yanqin Wu
The spacings of super-Earths in multi-transiting systems exhibit a distribution that is broad and mostly featureless, with the exception of notable excesses of planet pairs situate…
Bouncing Grains Keep Protoplanetary Disks Bright
Yansong Qian, Yanqin Wu
Proto-planetary disks display the so-called size-luminosity relation, where their mm-wavelength fluxes scale linearly with their emitting areas. This suggests that these disks are…
Dynamical evolution of stellar binaries in galactic centers
Mark Dodici, Scott Tremaine, Yanqin Wu
Stellar binaries in galactic centers are relevant to several observable phenomena, including hypervelocity stars, X-ray binaries, and mergers of stars and compact objects; however,…
Free Floating or Merely Detached?
Sam Hadden, Yanqin Wu
Microlensing surveys suggest the presence of a surprisingly large population of free-floating planets, with a rate of about two Neptunes per star. The origin of such objects is not…
Testing tidal theory using Gaia binaries: the red giant branch
Janosz W. Dewberry, Yanqin Wu
Tidal interaction is a major ingredient in the theory of binary evolution. Here, we study tidal circularization in binaries with red giant primaries. We compute the tidal evolution…