Supervisor : Dr Richard Alexander (richard.alexander@leicester.ac.uk)

Details of Project

In the last decade observational searches have discovered over 1000 extra-solar planets.  We have now moved beyond the era of simply detecting planets to trying to characterise their properties, and perhaps the greatest surprise has been that most extra-solar planetary systems look nothing like our Solar

Numerical simulation of a planet migrating in a protoplanetary disc performed by current PhD student Alex Dunhill.

System.  Planets form in "protoplanetary" accretion discs around newly-formed stars, which are essentially youthful analogues of the Sun.  Many different physical processes operate in these discs, but we do not yet have a good understanding of how the competition between these processes leads to the diverse range of outcomes seen in exo-planetary systems.  The student will construct theoretical and numerical and models of planet formation in evolving protoplanetary discs, with the goal of understanding the observed diversity seen in the exo-planet "zoo".