Numerous numerical studies have been carried out in recent years that simulate different aspects of exoplanets' magnetosphere and stellar winds. These studies have focused primarily on hot Jupiters with sun-like stars. This study addresses the challenges inherent in utilizing existing MHD codes to model hot Jupiter-star systems. Due to the scaling of the system and the assumption of a uniformly flowing stellar wind at the outer boundary of the simulation, MHD codes necessitate a minimum distance of greater than 0.4 au for a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a sun-like star to avoid substantial violations of the code's assumptions. Additionally, employing the GAMERA (Grid Agnostic MHD for Extended Research Applications) MHD code, we simulate star-planet interactions considering various stellar types (Sun-like and M Dwarf stars) with both Jupiter-like and Earth-like planets positioned at varying orbital distances. Furthermore, we explore the impact of tidal locking on the total power within the magnetosphere-ionosphere systems.
@article{arxiv.2404.14377,
title = {A Fresh Look into the Interaction of Exoplanets Magnetosphere with Stellar Winds using MHD Simulations},
author = {Fatemeh Bagheri and Ramon E. Lopez and Kevin Pham},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.14377},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
11 pages, submitted to Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences