Speaker: Christiaan van Buchem (University of Leiden)
Lava planet surface-atmosphere interactions: the road to observables
Abstract: With hundreds of hot-rocky exoplanets (surface temperature above ~1500 K) discovered and a number of targets accepted for JWST observations, understanding the links between the interior and atmospheres of these worlds and what we can learn from the observations is more relevant than ever.
Thanks to the molten surfaces supported by these planets, a direct interface between the planet’s interior and atmosphere exists. Hence, the composition of the atmosphere of these planets is likely to be closely linked to the composition of the lava oceans, providing a unique opportunity to characterize their mantle compositions. This requires a detailed understanding of surface-atmosphere interactions that may take place in such a system. With this in mind, we developed an open source code that predicts the composition of the outgassed vapor for a given magma composition and temperature.
Linking this code with other existing atmospheric chemistry and radiative transfer codes allows us to make model spectra for a wide range of different interior compositions and atmosphere types. In this talk we go over our results and their implications for observations.