Related papers: Thermally-Diven Atmospheric Escape
Exoplanets with substantial Hydrogen/Helium atmospheres have been discovered in abundance, many residing extremely close to their parent stars. The extreme irradiation levels these atmospheres experience causes them to undergo hydrodynamic…
A combined fluid/kinetic model is developed to calculate thermally driven escape of N2 from Pluto's atmosphere for two solar heating conditions: no heating above 1450 km and solar minimum heating conditions. In the combined model,…
Atmosphere escape is one key process controlling the evolution of planets. However, estimating the escape rate in any detail is difficult because there are many physical processes contributing to the total escape rate. Here we show that as…
Thermally-driven atmospheric escape evolves from an organized outflow (hydrodynamic escape) to escape on a molecule by molecules basis (Jeans escape) with increasing Jeans parameter, the ratio of the gravitational to thermal energy of…
The bolometric radiation from a central body is potentially a powerful driver of atmospheric escape from planets or satellites. When heated above their equilibrium temperatures those satellites, due to their low surface gravity, are be…
Escape of an early atmosphere from Titan, during which time NH3 could be converted by photolysis into the present N2 dominated atmosphere, is an important problem in planetary science. Recently Gilliam and Lerman (2014) estimated escape…
The habitability of the surface of any planet is determined by a complex evolution of its interior, surface, and atmosphere. The electromagnetic and particle radiation of stars drive thermal, chemical and physical alteration of planetary…
The hydrodynamic escape driven by external or internal energy sources sculpts the population of low mass close-in planets. However, distinguishing between the driving mechanisms responsible for the hydrodynamic escape of hydrogen-rich…
The equations of gas dynamics are extensively used to describe atmospheric loss from solar system bodies and exoplanets even though the boundary conditions at infinity are not uniquely defined. Using molecular-kinetic simulations that…
Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) driven atmospheric escape is a key process in the atmospheric evolution of close-in exoplanets. In many evolutionary models, the energy-limited mass-loss rate with a constant efficiency (typically $\sim10\%$) is…
Atmospheric escape is key to explaining the long-term evolution of planets in our Solar System and beyond, and in the interpretation of atmospheric measurements. Hydrodynamic escape is generally thought to be driven by the flux of extreme…
Atmospheric escape is an important process that influences the evolution of planetary atmospheres. A variety of physical mechanisms can contribute to escape from an atmosphere, including thermal escape, ion escape, photochemical escape, and…
In the present chapter we present the results of evolutionary studies of exoplanetary atmospheres. We mostly focus on the sub- to super-Earth domain, although these methods are applicable to all types of exoplanets. We consider both thermal…
An important evolutionary pathway for planetary atmospheres is escape to space, which has been studied on Earth and Mars for several decades and more recently in exoplanets. A particularly important regime is the hydrodynamic escape,…
In the present series of papers we propose a consistent description of the mass loss process. To study the effects of intrinsic magnetic field of a close-orbit giant exoplanet (so-called Hot Jupiter) on the atmospheric material escape and…
The long-term retention of substantial atmospheres in close-in exoplanets presents a major challenge to classical hydrodynamic escape theory, which predicts rapid mass loss under intense stellar irradiation. In this work, we propose a fully…
Predicting the rate of escape and thermal structure of Pluto's upper atmosphere in preparation for the New Horizons Spacecraft encounter in 2015 is important for planning and interpreting the expected measurements. Having a moderate Jeans…
By considering martian-like planetary embryos inside the habitable zone of solar-like stars we study the behavior of the hydrodynamic atmospheric escape of hydrogen for small values of the Jeans escape parameter $\beta < 3$, near the base…
The review aims to give an overview of atmospheric escape processes from exoplanets. I briefly discuss the physics of various escape processes responsible for atmospheric escape across different types of exoplanets. Transmission…
There is growing observational and theoretical evidence suggesting that atmospheric escape is a key driver of planetary evolution. Commonly, planetary evolution models employ simple analytic formulae (e.g., energy limited escape) that are…