Exoplanets and Stellar Physics

Abstract:

Measuring the abundances of carbon- and oxygen-bearing molecules has been a primary focus in studying the atmospheres of hot Jupiters, as doing so can help constrain the carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) ratio. The C/O ratio can help reveal the evolution and formation pathways of hot Jupiters and provide a strong understanding of the atmospheric composition. In the last decade, high-resolution spectral analyses have become increasingly useful in measuring precise abundances of several carbon- and oxygen-bearing molecules. This allows for a more precise constraint of the C/O ratio. We present four transits of the hot Jupiter WASP-43b observed between 1.45 and 2.45 μm with the high-resolution Immersion GRating InfraRed Spectrometer on the Gemini-S telescope. We detected H2O at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3.51. We tested for the presence of CH4, CO, and CO2, but we did not detect these carbon-bearing species. We ran a retrieval for all four molecules and obtained a water abundance of log 10 ( H 2 O ) = − 2.2 4 − 0.48 + 0.57 . We obtained an upper limit on the C/O ratio of C/O < 0.95. These findings are consistent with previous observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.

Abstract:

Irradiated brown dwarfs offer a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between stellar and planetary atmospheres. We present high-quality Hubble Space Telescope/Wide Field Camera 3/G141 phase-resolved spectra of the white dwarf-brown dwarf binary GD 1400, covering more than one full rotation of the brown dwarf. Accounting for brightness variations caused by ZZ Ceti pulsations, we revealed weak (∼1%) phase-curve amplitude modulations originating from the brown dwarf. Subband light-curve exploration in various bands showed no significant wavelength dependence on amplitude or phase shift. Extracted day- and nightside spectra indicated chemically similar hemispheres, with slightly higher dayside temperatures, suggesting efficient heat redistribution or the dominance of radiative escape over atmospheric circulation. A simple radiative and energy redistribution model reproduced the observed temperatures well. Cloud-inclusive models fit the day and night spectra better than cloudless models, indicating global cloud coverage. We also begin qualitatively exploring atmospheric trends across six irradiated brown dwarfs, from the now complete “Dancing with the Dwarfs” white dwarf-brown dwarf sample. The trend we find in the dayside/nightside temperature and irradiation levels is consistent with efficient heat redistribution for irradiation levels less than ∼109 erg s−1 cm−2 and decreasing efficiency above that level.

Abstract:

Stellar active regions like spots and faculae can distort the shapes of spectral lines, inducing variations in the radial velocities that are often orders of magnitude larger than the signals from Earth-like planets. Efforts to mitigate these activity signals have hitherto focused on either the time or the velocity (wavelength) domains. We present a physics-driven Gaussian process (GP) framework to model activity signals directly in time series of line profiles or cross-correlation functions (CCFs). Unlike existing methods that correct activity signals in line profile time series, our approach exploits the time correlation between velocity (wavelength) bins in the line profile variations, and is based on a simplified but physically motivated model for the origin of these variations. When tested on both synthetic and real data sets with signal-to-noise ratios down to ∼100, our method was able to separate the planetary signal from the activity signal, even when their periods were identical. We also conducted injection/recovery tests using two years of realistically sampled HARPS-N solar data, demonstrating the ability of the method to accurately recover a signal induced by a 1.5-Earth mass planet with a semi-amplitude of 0.3 m s-1 and a period of 33 d during high solar activity.