Exoplanets and Stellar Physics

Abstract:

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The implications of the water vapor runaway greenhouse phenomenon for water-rich sub-Neptunes are developed. In particular, the nature of the postrunaway equilibration process for planets that have an extremely high water inventory is addressed. Crossing the threshold from subrunaway to superrunaway conditions leads to a transition from equilibrated states with cold, deep liquid oceans and deep interior ice-X phases to states with hot supercritical fluid interiors. There is a corresponding marked inflation of radius for a given mass, similar to the runaway greenhouse radius inflation effect noted earlier for terrestrial planets, but in the present case the inflation involves the entire interior of the planet. The calculation employs the AQUA equation-of-state database to simplify the internal structure calculation. Some speculations concerning the effect of H<jats:sub>2</jats:sub> admixture, silicate cores, and hot- versus cold-start evolution trajectories are offered. Observational implications are discussed though the search for the mass–radius signature of the phenomena considered is limited by degeneracies and by lack of data.</jats:p>

Abstract:

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The gas giant HD 80606 b has a highly eccentric orbit (e ∼ 0.93). The variation due to the rapid shift of stellar irradiation provides a unique opportunity to probe the physical and chemical timescales and to study the interplay between climate dynamics and atmospheric chemistry. In this work, we present integrated models to study the atmospheric responses and the underlying physical and chemical mechanisms of HD 80606 b. We first run three-dimensional general circulation models (GCMs) to establish the atmospheric thermal and dynamical structures for different atmospheric metallicities and internal heat. Based on the GCM output, we then adopted a 1D time-dependent photochemical model to investigate the compositional variation along the eccentric orbit. The transition of the circulation patterns of HD 80606 b matched the dynamics regimes in previous works. Our photochemical models show that efficient vertical mixing leads to deep quench levels of the major carbon and nitrogen species and the quenching behavior does not change throughout the eccentric orbit. Instead, photolysis is the main driver of the time-dependent chemistry. While CH4 dominates over CO through most of the orbits, a transient state of [CO]/[CH4] &amp;gt; 1 after periastron is confirmed for all metallicity and internal heat cases. The upcoming JWST Cycle 1 GO program will be able to track this real-time CH4–CO conversion and infer the chemical timescale. Furthermore, sulfur species initiated by sudden heating and photochemical forcing exhibit both short-term and long-term cycles, opening an interesting avenue for detecting sulfur on exoplanets.</jats:p>

Abstract:

The gas giant HD 80606 b has a highly eccentric orbit (e ∼ 0.93). The variation due to the rapid shift of stellar irradiation provides a unique opportunity to probe the physical and chemical timescales and to study the interplay between climate dynamics and atmospheric chemistry. In this work, we present integrated models to study the atmospheric responses and the underlying physical and chemical mechanisms of HD 80606 b. We first run 3D general circulation models (GCMs) to establish the atmospheric thermal and dynamical structures for different atmospheric metallicities and internal heat. Based on the GCM output, we then adopted a 1D time-dependent photochemical model to investigate the compositional variation along the eccentric orbit. The transition of the circulation patterns of HD 80606 b matched the dynamics regimes in previous works. Our photochemical models show that efficient vertical mixing leads to deep quench levels of the major carbon and nitrogen species and the quenching behaviour does not change throughout the eccentric orbit. Instead, photolysis is the main driver of the time-dependent chemistry. While CH₄ dominates over CO through most of the orbits, a transient state of [CO]/[CH₄] > 1 after periastron is confirmed for all metallicity and internal heat cases. The upcoming JWST Cycle 1 GO program will be able to track this real-time CH₄–CO conversion and infer the chemical timescale. Furthermore, sulfur species initiated by sudden heating and photochemical forcing exhibit both short-term and long-term cycles, opening an interesting avenue for detecting sulfur on exoplanets.

Abstract:

Transmission spectroscopy^1-3 of exoplanets has revealed signatures of water vapour, aerosols and alkali metals in a few dozen exoplanet atmospheres^4,5. However, these previous inferences with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes were hindered by the observations' relatively narrow wavelength range and spectral resolving power, which precluded the unambiguous identification of other chemical species-in particular the primary carbon-bearing molecules^6,7. Here we report a broad-wavelength 0.5-5.5 µm atmospheric transmission spectrum of WASP-39b⁸, a 1,200 K, roughly Saturn-mass, Jupiter-radius exoplanet, measured with the JWST NIRSpec's PRISM mode⁹ as part of the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Team Program^10-12. We robustly detect several chemical species at high significance, including Na (19σ), H₂O (33σ), CO₂ (28σ) and CO (7σ). The non-detection of CH₄, combined with a strong CO₂ feature, favours atmospheric models with a super-solar atmospheric metallicity. An unanticipated absorption feature at 4 µm is best explained by SO₂ (2.7σ), which could be a tracer of atmospheric photochemistry. These observations demonstrate JWST's sensitivity to a rich diversity of exoplanet compositions and chemical processes.