Planet formation and dynamics

Abstract:

Abstract Ultra-short period lava worlds offer a unique window into the coupled evolution of planetary interior and atmospheres under extreme irradiation. In this study, we investigate the mantle dynamics, nightside volcanism, and volatile outgassing on lava world K2-141 b (1.54 R⊕, 5.31 M⊕) using two-dimensional convection models with tracer-based volatile tracking. Our simulations explore a range of interior configurations, including models with and without plastic yielding, basal versus mixed heating, core cooling, and melt intrusion. In models without plastic yielding (i.e. with a strong lithosphere), we find that mantle upwellings form at the substellar and antistellar points, while downwellings form near the day-night terminators at the boundary between the magma ocean and cold, solid nightside. These downwellings facilitate the recycling of crustal material, representing a form of asymmetric, single-lid tectonics. The resulting magma ocean thickness varies from 200 to 300 km depending on the model parameters, corresponding to about 2-3 % of the planet’s radius. Continuous nightside volcanism produces a basaltic crust and gradually depletes the mantle of volatiles. We find that over a billion years, volcanic eruptions can outgas tens of bars of CO2 and H2O. We show that even relatively large volcanic eruptions on the nightside produce thermal emission signals of no more than 1 ppm, remaining below the current detectability threshold in thermal phase curves. However, for most models, outgassing rates are increased near the day-night terminators and future studies should assess whether such localised outgassing could lead to atmospheric signatures in transmission spectroscopy.

Abstract:

The spectrum of an exoplanet reveals the physical, chemical, and biological processes that have shaped its history and govern its future. However, observations of exoplanet spectra are complicated by the overwhelming glare of their host stars. Here, we focus on high-resolution spectroscopy (HRS) (R∼5,000−140,000), which helps disentangle and isolate the exoplanet’s spectrum. HRS resolves molecular features into a dense forest of individual lines in a pattern that is unique for a given molecule. For close-in planets, the spectral lines undergo large Doppler shifts during the planet’s orbit, while the host star and Earth’s spectral features remain essentially stationary, enabling a velocity separation of the planet. For slower-moving, wide-orbit planets, HRS, aided by high contrast imaging, instead isolates their spectra using their spatial separation (high contrast spectroscopy; HCS). The planet’s spectral lines are compared with HRS model atmospheric spectra, typically using cross-correlation to sum their signals. It is essentially a form of fingerprinting for exoplanet atmospheres and works for both transiting and non-transiting planets. It measures their orbital velocity, true mass, and simultaneously characterizes their atmosphere. The unique sensitivity of HRS to the depth, shape, and position of the planet’s spectral lines allows it to measure atmospheric composition, structure, clouds, and dynamics, including day-to-night winds and equatorial jets, plus its rotation period and even its magnetic field. These are extracted using statistically robust log-likelihood frameworks and match space-based instruments in their precision. This chapter describes the HRS technique in detail and concludes with future prospects with Extremely Large Telescopes to identify biosignatures on nearby rocky worlds and map features in the atmospheres of giant exoplanets.

Abstract:

Context. Characterizations of giant exoplanets such as β Pictoris b (hereafter β Pic b) are now routinely performed with multiple spectrographs and imagers exploring different spectral bandwidths and resolutions, allowing for atmospheric retrieval of spectra with or without the conservation of the planet spectral continuum. The accounting of data multimodality in the analysis could provide a more comprehensive determination of the planets physical and chemical properties and inform on their formation history. Aims. We present the first VLTI observations at R λ ∼4000 of β Pic b obtained for an exoplanet with GRAVITY at such a high resolution. We upgraded the forward modelling code ForMoSA to account for the data multimodality, including low-, medium-, and high-resolution spectroscopy based on both a direct model-data comparison and an analysis of cross-correlation signals. We used the ForMoSA code to refine the constraints on the atmospheric properties of the exoplanet and evaluated the sensitivity of the retrieved values to the input dataset. Methods. We obtained four high-signal-to-noise (S/N ∼ 20) spectra of β Pic b in the K band with GRAVITY at R λ ∼4000 conserving both the pseudo-continuum and the pattern of molecular absorptions. We used ForMoSA with four grids of self-consistent forward models (Exo-REM, ATMO, BT-Settl, and Sonora) to explore different T e ff , log(g), metallicity, C/O, and 12 CO/ 13 CO ratio values. We then combined the GRAVITY spectra with published 1–5 µm photometry (NaCo, VisAO, NICI, and SPHERE), low-to-mediumresolution ( R λ ≤ 700 broadband, 0.9–7 µm) spectra, and echelle spectra covering narrower bandwidths ( R λ ∼ 100 000, 2.1–5.2 µm). Results. Sonora and Exo-REM are statistically preferred among all four models, regardless of the dataset used. Exo-REM predicts T eff  = 1607.45 −6.20 +4.85 K and log(g) = 4.46 −0.04 +0.02 dex when using only the GRAVITY epochs, whereas we have T eff  = 1502.74 −2.14 +2.32 K log(g) = 4.00 ± 0.01 dex when incorporating all available datasets. The inclusion of archival data significantly affects all retrieved posteriors. When using all datasets, C/O mostly remains solar (0.552 −0.002 +0.003 ), while [M/H] reaches super-solar values (0.50 ± 0.01). We report the first tentative constraint on the isotopic ratio log( 12 CO/ 13 CO) = 1.12 −0.08 +0.11 in β Pic b’s atmosphere; however, we note that this detection remains inconclusive due to telluric residuals affecting both the GRAVITY and SINFONI data. Additionally, we estimated the bolometric luminosity as log(L/L ⊙ ) = −4.01 −0.05 +0.04 dex. Using a system age of 23 ± 3 Myr, along with this bolometric luminosity and the constraints on the dynamical mass of β Pic b, we were able to constrain the maximum of heavy element content of the planet to be on the order of 5% (20–80 M Earth ). Conclusions. The joint access to the pseudo-continuum and molecular lines in the K band provided by GRAVITY have a significant impact on the retrieved metallicity, possibly owing to the collision-induced absorption driving the continuum shape of the K band. The echelle spectra do not dominate the final fit with respect to lower resolution data covering a broader portion of the spectral energy distribution and the latter keeps encapsulating more robust information on T eff . Future multimodal frameworks should include a weighting scheme to account for the bandwidth and central wavelength of the observations.