Dr Sonia Cornejo - About me

¡Hola!

I am a computational astrophysicist who studies how young planets interact with the gas and dust in the disks where they form. I focus on how these interactions change their orbits over time and influence planet formation. Most of my research involves running numerical experiments, like hydrodynamic and N-body simulations. With these tools, I explore various physical processes and observe how they operate in realistic disk environments.

I was born in Mexico City and earned my Bachelor’s degree in Physics at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). I also completed both my Master’s and PhD in Astrophysics at UNAM, focusing on the theoretical and numerical aspects of planet formation. In late 2023, I moved to Göttingen, Germany, to join the Planet Formation Group at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research as a postdoctoral researcher.

My research on planet formation:

How planet–disk interactions shape the
evolution of planetary building blocks

Gap formation by giant planets
and implications for solid transport

Giant planets like Jupiter can create deep gaps in protoplanetary disks, where the gas surface density drops along the planet’s orbit. When the gas is disturbed in this way, small solids moving through the disk encounter a different aerodynamic environment, which changes where dust and grains accumulate or drift. This matters because the chemical and isotopic signatures in meteorites today indicate that their parent bodies formed in distinct chemical reservoirs during the gas-rich phase of the protoplanetary disk, with limited mixing between them. These reservoirs likely emerged while solids interacted with disk structures that altered their transport. Then, we can learn more about the early Solar System by modeling how planet-induced gas structures influence the movement of solids.

This work is part of my postdoctoral research led by Joanna Drążkowska at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, where I use FARGO3D simulations.

How thermal forces shape
the early evolution of low-mass planets

Early-stage low-mass planets, such as Mars-like embryos, frequently accreted solids ranging from millimeter-sized pebbles to kilometer-scale planetesimals. These impacts released sufficient energy to melt portions of their surfaces, making the embryos luminous. The surrounding disk gas diffused and redistributed this heat, so the effective temperature of a luminous embryo altered the disk’s local thermal profile. This process generated temperature (and therefore density) perturbations that influenced the shape of the planet’s orbit, thereby affecting both its orbit and its capacity to accrete material.

In my work, I explored how thermal forces modify the eccentricity and inclination of low-mass planets, and how these orbital changes regulate solid accretion. When an embryo’s luminosity is below a critical threshold, thermal diffusion cools the surrounding gas and damps its eccentricity and inclination, keeping it close to the disk midplane where solids are abundant, a regime that typically occurs in low-metallicity disks. Above that threshold, thermal forces instead excite eccentricity and inclination, reducing the time that embryos spend near the midplane and limiting solid accretion, a regime favored in high-metallicity disks. A key implication of this mechanism is that the final masses of low-mass planets become nearly independent of the stellar metallicity.

I conducted this research during my master’s and PhD studies at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, under the supervision of Frédéric Masset and Javier Sánchez, using REBOUND and FARGO3D simulations.

My last name is Cornejo Patiño. In Spanish-speaking countries, it’s common to use two family names: the first from your father and the second from your mother. I usually use Cornejo in academic settings.
The illustrations were generated using AI-based illustration tools (Midjourney + ChatGPT) and edited for scientific communication.