Planet Formation on the Edge: From Dust Retention to Broken Resonant Chains

Explore a 19-minute conference talk by Rixin Li from Berkeley, recorded during the "Planets on the Edge" KITP conference held at UC Santa Barbara's Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in May 2025. Delve into cutting-edge research on planet formation processes, from dust retention mechanisms to the dynamics of broken resonant chains in exoplanetary systems. This presentation contributes to the conference's broader goals of understanding Earth-sized planets in inner protoplanetary disks, addressing key questions about their nature, formation pathways, governing parameters across different star systems, and why our Solar System lacks analogous close-in rocky planets. The talk is part of a collaborative effort bringing together experts in exoplanet demographics, protoplanetary disks, formation models, and meteoritics to synthesize current knowledge and advance future research directions in observations, theory, and computational modeling.