Dan Tamayo (Harvey Mudd)
Overview
While several processes are thought to be important in the early phase of planet formation, most theories converge on a final stage dominated by giant impacts that set the ultimate masses and orbital architectures that we observe today in exoplanet systems. Yet despite significant theoretical effort, we do not yet fully understand the chaotic dynamics driving these giant impacts, and we are unable to predict a priori which regions in the space of possible orbital configurations will be long-term stable, and which will lead to instability. I will discuss recent theoretical developments, present numerical results showing how such instabilities sculpt exoplanet demographics at close orbital separations. and close with a roadmap of ongoing work and open questions.