English

Is the high-energy environment of K2-18b special?

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2026-03-11 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

K2-18b lies near the radius valley that separates super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, marking a key transitional regime in planetary and atmospheric composition. The system offers a valuable opportunity to study how M-dwarf high-energy stellar radiation influences atmospheric stability and the potential for sustaining volatile species, especially important in the context of the upcoming ELT and its ANDES spectrograph. This study characterizes the high-energy environment of K2-18 with X-ray observations from eROSITA, the soft X-ray instrument on the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) mission, Chandra, and XMM-Newton. We derive a representative 0.2-2 keV X-ray flux with an APEC thermal plasma model fitted with the Bayesian X-ray Analysis (BXA). With the observed X-ray flux from the exoplanet host star, we estimate the photoevaporative mass loss of exoplanet K2-18b using the energy-limited model. In addition, we examine the thermal structure of the system based on a hydrodynamic model. In 100 ks XMM-Newton observation we identified K2-18 as a very faint X-ray source with FX=1015 ergs1cm2\mathrm{F_X = 10^{-15}\ erg\,s^{-1}\,cm^{-2}}, with an activity level of (Lx/Lbol) 105\sim 10^{-5}. A small flare has been detected during the observation. The planet is irradiated by an X-ray flux of Fpl,X=12±3 ergs1cm2\mathrm{F_{pl,X} = 12\pm3\ erg\,s^{-1}\,cm^{-2}}. The X-ray flux measurement of K2-18 gives important limitations for atmospheric escape and photochemical modeling of its exoplanets. Despite its near orbit around an M-dwarf star, K2-18b's low activity level environment suggests that it can retain an atmosphere, supporting recent tentative detections of atmospheres.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.06939,
  title  = {Is the high-energy environment of K2-18b special?},
  author = {S. Rukdee and M. Güdel and I. Vilović and K. Poppenhäger and S. Boro Saikia and J. Buchner and B. Stelzer and G. Roccetti and J. V. Seidel and V. Burwitz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.06939},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

11 pages, 9 figures, accepted to A&A