Related papers: Oxidation of CO on surface hematite in high CO2 at…
Electron cooling, in which free electrons lose energy to vibrational excitation of gases, has been identified as a significant process in the atmospheres of Mars and Venus for electron impact on CO2. This process does not appear to have…
Venus shares many similarities with the Earth, but concomitantly, some of its features are extremely original. This is especially true for its atmosphere, where high pressures and temperatures are found at the ground level. In these…
While Earth locks much of its carbon in its crust as carbonates, Venus retains a comparable carbon inventory almost entirely in its atmosphere as CO$_2$. On Earth, the geological carbon cycle that has produced this vast crustal carbonate…
Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are the most common exoplanets, with a "radius valley" suggesting that super-Earths may form by shedding sub-Neptunes' gaseous envelopes. Exoplanets that lie closer to the super-Earth side of the valley are…
We consider super-Earth sized planets which have a water mass fraction that is large enough to form an external mantle composed of high pressure water ice polymorphs and that lack a substantial H/He atmosphere. We consider such planets in…
We have obtained spatially resolved near-infrared spectroscopy of the Venus nightside on 15 nights over three observing seasons. We use the depth of the CO absorption band at 2.3 microns to map the two-dimensional distribution of CO across…
Atmospheric chemistry models have shown molecular oxygen can build up in CO2-dominated atmospheres on potentially habitable exoplanets without an input of life. Existing models typically assume a surface pressure of 1 bar. Here we present…
Water photolysis and hydrogen loss from the upper atmospheres of terrestrial planets is of fundamental importance to climate evolution but remains poorly understood in general. Here we present a range of calculations we performed to study…
A recent study by Ramirez et al. (2014) demonstrated that an atmosphere with 1.3-4 bar of CO2 and H2O, in addition to 5-20% H2, could have raised the mean annual and global surface temperature of early Mars above the freezing point of…
Experiments performed at high gas partial pressures have demonstrated that the kinetics of the CO oxidation reaction at Ru(0001) is different and somewhat anomalous compared to that over other transition metal surfaces and, in particular,…
The presence of valleys on ancient terrains of Mars suggest that liquid water flowed on the martian surface 3.8 billion years ago or before. The above-freezing temperatures required to explain valley formation could have been transient, in…
Despite a fainter Sun, the surface of the early Earth was mostly ice-free. Proposed solutions to this so-called "faint young Sun problem" have usually involved higher amounts of greenhouse gases than present in the modern-day atmosphere.…
Reconciling the geology of Mars with models of atmospheric evolution remains a major challenge. Martian geology is characterized by past evidence for episodic surface liquid water, and geochemistry indicating a slow and intermittent…
Jupiter's icy moon Ganymede has a tenuous exosphere produced by sputtering and possibly sublimation of water ice. To date, only atomic hydrogen and oxygen have been directly detected in this exosphere. Here, we present observations of…
Context: The thermal and chemical structures of the upper atmospheres of planets crucially influence losses to space and must be understood to constrain the effects of losses on atmospheric evolution. Aims: We develop a 1D first-principles…
Collisions between hot hydrogen atoms and CO$_2$ play a central role in energy transfer and atmospheric escape in CO$_2$-rich planetary atmospheres. We present quantum mechanical $j_z$-conserving coupled-states calculations of…
Many sub-Neptune and super-Earth exoplanets are expected to develop metal-enriched atmospheres due to atmospheric loss processes such as photoevaporation or core-powered mass loss. Thermochemical equilibrium calculations predict that at…
We use a 1D thermochemical and photochemical kinetics model to predict the disequilibrium stratospheric chemistries of warm and hot Jupiters (800 < T < 1200 K). Thermal chemistry and vertical mixing are generally more important than…
Surface-bound exospheres facilitate volatile migration across the surfaces of nearly airless bodies. However, such transport requires that the body can both form and retain an exosphere. To form a sublimation exosphere requires the surface…
Ultraviolet (UV) absorption cross sections are an essential ingredient of photochemical atmosphere models. Exoplanet searches have unveiled a large population of short-period objects with hot atmospheres, very different from what we find in…