Over the past few decades, planetary science has seen a tremendous horizon widening. Nowadays, planetary science stretches from the detailed investigation of our Solar system planets to the detection and characterization of thousands of planets around other stars. These so-called exoplanets span orders of magnitude in planet mass (~1 Earth mass to ~20 Jupiter masses) with some overlap to the brown dwarf regime, planet radius (~0.1 Earth radii to about 2 Jupiter radii), and orbital distances (~0.01 AU to ~100 AU). Therefore, if we seek to understand their physical nature and compare them to the planet we inhabit (Earth) and its farther out neighbors (like Jupiter), knowledge of material properties across wide ranges in temperature, pressure, and composition are required.

In this Working Group we investigate the internal structure, thermal evolution, and physical make-up of all classes of planets and of brown dwarfs.