Concise and self-contained, this textbook gives a graduate-level introduction to the physical processes that shape planetary systems, covering all stages of planet formation. Writing for readers with undergraduate backgrounds in physics, astronomy, and planetary science, Armitage begins with a description of the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks, moves on to the formation of planetesimals, rocky, and giant planets, and concludes by describing the gravitational and gas dynamical evolution of planetary systems. He provides a self-contained account of the modern theory of planet formation and, for more advanced readers, carefully selected references to the research literature, noting areas where research is ongoing. The second edition has been thoroughly revised to include observational results from NASA's Kepler mission, ALMA observations and the JUNO mission to Jupiter, new theoretical ideas including pebble accretion, and an up-to-date understanding in areas such as disk evolution and planet migration.

Graduate-level textbook providing a basic understanding of the astrophysical processes for readers in planetary science, and observational and theoretical astronomy.

A self-contained graduate-level introduction to the physical processes that shape planetary systems, covering all stages of planet formation.

This book's interdisciplinary scope aims at bridging various communities: 1) cosmochemists, who study meteoritic samples from our own solar system, 2) (sub-) millimetre astronomers, who measure the distribution of dust and gas of star-forming regions and planet-forming discs, 3) disc modellers, who describe the complex photo-chemical structure of parametric discs to fit these to observation, 4) computational astrophysicists, who attempt to decipher the dynamical structure of magnetised gaseous discs, and the effects the resulting internal structure has on the aerodynamic re-distribution of embedded solids, 5) theoreticians in planet formation theory, who aim to piece it all together eventually arriving at a coherent holistic picture of the architectures of planetary systems discovered by 6) the exoplanet observers, who provide us with unprecedented samples of exoplanet worlds. Combining these diverse fields the book sheds light onto the riddles that research on planet formation is currently confronted with, and paves the way for a comprehensive understanding of the formation, evolution, and dynamics of young solar systems. The chapters ‘Chondrules – Ubiquitous Chondritic Solids Tracking the Evolution of the Solar Protoplanetary Disk’, ‘Dust Coagulation with Porosity Evolution’ and ‘The Emerging Paradigm of Pebble Accretion’ are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

This first comprehensive account of the dynamical processes in the formation of stars and disks from which planets ultimately form.

Is the Sun and its planetary system special? How did the Solar system form? Are there similar systems in the Galaxy? How common are habitable planets? What processes take place in the early life of stars and in their surrounding circumstellar disks that could impact whether life emerges or not? This book is based on the lectures by Philip Armitage and Wilhelm Kley presented at 45th Saas-Fee Advanced Course?From Protoplanetary Disks to Planet Formation" of the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy. The first part deals with the physical processes occurring in proto-planetary disks starting with the observational context, structure and evolution of the proto-planetary disk, turbulence and accretion, particle evolution and structure formation. The second part covers planet formation and disk-planet interactions. This includes in detail dust and planetesimal formation, growth to protoplanets, terrestrial planet formation, giant planet formation, migration of planets, multi-planet systems and circumbinary planets. As Saas-Fee advanced course this book offers PhD students an in-depth treatment of the topic enabling them to enter on a research project in the field.

This volume provides a state-of-the-art review of our current knowledge of brown dwarfs and very low-mass stars. The hunt for and study of these elusive objects is currently one of the most dynamic areas of research in astronomy for two reasons. Brown dwarfs bridge the gap between stars and planets, and they may constitute an important part of the 'dark matter' of the Universe. This volume presents review articles from a team of international authorities who gathered at a conference in La Palma to assess the spectacular progress that has been made in this field in the last few years.