English

ORCHARD: A General Planetary Evolution Code

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2026-04-29 v1 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

We present \texttt{ORCHARD}, a publicly available planetary evolution code based on the gas giant evolution code, \texttt{APPLE}, capable of modeling the evolution and structures of terrestrial, super-Earth, sub-Neptune, Neptune, and gas giant planets and exoplanets from 0.5 M_\oplus to 10 MJ_J. It supports not only the inhomogeneous and non-adiabatic evolution of gas giants and sub-Neptunes, but also the solidification of the mantles and cores of terrestrial planets, sub-Neptunes, and super-Earths. \texttt{ORCHARD} incorporates a state-of-the-art hydrogen-helium equation of state, ``metal" equations of state (water, ice mixtures, enstatite/perovskite, olivine/forsterite, iron), and atmospheric boundary conditions ranging from detailed non-gray radiative transfer models for Solar System giants to irradiated sub-Neptune atmospheres and bare rocky surfaces. The purpose of \texttt{ORCHARD} is to provide the scientific community with a flexible, unified tool for modeling planetary structures and evolution across the entire mass continuum of general astrophysical and planetary interest.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.24845,
  title  = {ORCHARD: A General Planetary Evolution Code},
  author = {Roberto Tejada Arevalo and Adam Burrows and Ankan Sur and Yubo Su},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.24845},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

34 pages, 11 Figures, 4 Tables, 2 Appendices. Submitted to ApJ

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:37:53.839Z