A Tale of Planet Formation: From Dust to Planets

TL;DR

This review synthesizes recent observational and theoretical advances in understanding exoplanet formation, emphasizing dust growth, planetesimal formation, and core accretion processes, and highlights future research directions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of modern core accretion models, integrating observational data with theoretical frameworks in planet formation.

Findings

Summarizes state-of-the-art exoplanet and disk observations.

Details the processes of dust growth, planetesimal formation, and core accretion.

Identifies key open questions and future research directions.

Abstract

The characterization of exoplanets and their birth protoplanetary disks has enormously advanced in the last decade. Benefitting from that, our global understanding of the planet formation processes has been substantially improved. In this review, we first summarize the cutting-edge states of the exoplanet and disk observations. We further present a comprehensive panoptic view of modern core accretion planet formation scenarios, including dust growth and radial drift, planetesimal formation by the streaming instability, core growth by planetesimal accretion and pebble accretion. We discuss the key concepts and physical processes in each growth stage and elaborate on the connections between theoretical studies and observational revelations. Finally, we point out the critical questions and future directions of planet formation studies.