Architecture of selected planetary systems: I. Stars, Planets, Planetesimals and Dust

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Hundreds of planetary systems have been discovered around other stars. They come in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes, and there is emerging evidence for their complexity. Yet their detailed architecture remains largely unknown even in the best-studied cases. The present project deals with “full” planetary systems which contain, apart the central star and one or several planets, also one or more dust disks (indicative of planetesimal belts). A handful of them are known, and more can be found with the help of accompanying projects that will search for inner and outer planets. The main goal of this project is to perform a comprehensive, coherent theoretical analysis of several selected “full” planetary systems. It will include constraining the system age, properties of the central star, masses and orbits of the planets, key parameters of the planetesimal belts; finding out the origin and chemical composition of dust; a dynamical stability study of the planets of the belts against perturbations by planets; and other issues. We will also attempt to roughly reconstruct possible formation scenarios and evolutionary paths of the systems. This will result in a synthetic view of several complex planetary systems, uncover their similarities and dissimilarities with the solar system, and finally, contribute to a better understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve.