Research Seminars @ Illinois

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Tailored for undergraduate researchers, this calendar is a curated list of research seminars at the University of Illinois. Explore the diverse world of research and expand your knowledge through engaging sessions designed to inspire and enlighten.

To have your events added or removed from this calendar, please contact OUR at ugresearch@illinois.edu

Artist Concept

"From Resonant Chains to Chaos: The Evolution of Planetary Systems"

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Department of Astronomy
Location
134 Astronomy Building
Virtual
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Date
Sep 16, 2025   3:45 - 4:45 pm  
Speaker
Professor Cristobal Petrovich
Contact
Daniel Franco
E-Mail
danielf9@illinois.edu
Phone
217-300-6769
Views
90
Originating Calendar
Astronomy Colloquium Speaker Calendar

Exoplanet surveys are revealing an emerging picture in which planetary systems are often born in long resonant chains. These architectures are the natural outcome of orbital migration in gaseous disks, where planets are locked into mean-motion resonances during the earliest stages of assembly. Yet this resonant order is fragile. Over time, resonances are disrupted, triggering instabilities that lead to ejections, collisions, and ultimately the diverse planetary architectures we observe today.

In this talk, I will present our efforts to probe both the formation and disruption of resonant chains. Using hydrodynamic simulations, we investigate how migration drives resonance capture and what observational signatures this process may leave in protoplanetary disks imaged with ALMA. With N-body simulations, we explore how leftover planetesimals can destabilize resonant systems, reshaping them into the configurations uncovered by exoplanet surveys. Together, these results highlight resonant chains as both the seeds and the breaking point of planetary architectures, bridging the gap between planet formation and the systems we observe today.

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