Julia Venturini - January 13, 2017

The formation of gas-rich planets

The results of the Kepler mission show that planets smaller than Neptune
("mini-Neptunes"), presumably composed of non-negligible amounts of hydrogen
and helium, are very frequent. The formation of this type of objects is
challenging for the classical core-accretion paradigm for giant planet
formation. I will show that mini-Neptunes are a natural outcome of the core
accretion model when including the effect of envelope enrichment by icy
planetesimals in formation models. I will discuss as well how envelope
enrichment affects the formation  timescale, the planetary
composition/structure, and the implications for the interpretation of
exoplanet observations.