Motivation

With a continuously increasing number of discovered exoplanets, research is shifting from pure detection to characterization of planets. The rapidly improving quality of observing tools and the success of space-based observations of exoplanets are driving detection and characterization toward ever smaller planets; several rocky planets have already been detected in or near habitable zones around their host stars.

Exoplanetary studies are increasingly confronted with questions on habitable conditions. These conditions are determined by various astrophysical factors such as stellar high-energy radiation, particle winds, magnetic fields, accreting small bodies, planetary collisions, and planetary system dynamics.

This conference addresses astrophysical factors and processes that are pivotal for the formation, sustainability, and evolution of habitable conditions on planets from the era of planet formation in disks to the end of the main sequence life of the host star.

Key issues include, among others

• Formation of terrestrial planets in protoplanetary disks, their interactions with disk material, and the formation of protoatmospheres
• The role of stellar output for the evolution of planetary atmospheres
• The importance of stellar and planetary magnetic fields for habitability
• The physics of erosion processes of planetary atmospheres
• The effects due to dynamical interactions in planetary systems around single and binary stars, including collisions, migration, and transport mechanisms