Related papers: Effect of Pressure Broadening on Molecular Absorpt…
Spectral lines of heavy atomic elements in the ejecta of supernovae and neutron star mergers can have important contribution to the opacity of the ejecta matter even when the abundance of the elements is very small. Under favorable…
Most observed exoplanets have high equilibrium temperatures. Understanding the chemistry of their atmospheres and interpreting their observations requires the use of chemical kinetic models including photochemistry. The thermal dependence…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
Collisions between electrons and radiating atoms broaden spectral absorption and emission lines in dense plasmas. High densities also introduce screening and pressure ionization effects that distort the wavefunctions of both bound and free…
The discovery of super-Earth and mini-Neptune exoplanets means that atmospheric signals from low-mass, temperate exoplanets are being increasingly studied. The signal acquired as the planet transits its host star, known as the transit…
We present a theory for interpreting the sodium lines detected in transmission spectra of exoplanetary atmospheres. Previous analyses employed the isothermal approximation and dealt only with the transit radius. By recognising the…
Most of the exoplanets detected up to now transit in front of their host stars, allowing for the generation of transmission spectra; the study of exoplanet atmospheres relies heavily upon accurate analysis of these spectra. Recent…
Since the mass loss rates are the function of the mean density of the planet and the stellar irradiation, we calculated about 450 models covering planets with different densities and stellar irradiation. Our results show that the mass loss…
Transmission spectroscopy provides a window to study exoplanetary atmospheres, but that window is fogged by clouds and hazes. Clouds and haze introduce a degeneracy between the strength of gaseous absorption features and planetary physical…
Understanding a planet's atmosphere is a necessary condition for understanding not only the planet itself, but also its formation, structure, evolution, and habitability, This puts a premium on obtaining spectra, and developing credible…
Aerosols appear to be ubiquitous in exoplanetary atmospheres. However because our understanding of the physical processes that govern aerosols is incomplete, their presence makes the measurement of atmospheric properties, such as molecular…
The atmospheres of synchronously rotating exoplanets are intrinsically three-dimensional, and fast vertical and horizontal winds are expected to mix the atmosphere, driving the chemical composition out of equilibrium. Due to the longer…
We describe the recent updates to the ExoMol database regarding the molecular spectral line shapes. ExoMol provides comprehensive molecular line lists with a special emphasis on the applications involving characterization of atmospheres of…
The presence of aerosols in an exoplanet atmosphere can veil the underlying material and can lead to a flat transmission spectrum during primary transit observations. In this work, we explore forward scattering effects from super-micron…
High-resolution transmission spectroscopy is a powerful method for probing the extended atmospheres of short-period exoplanets. With the advancement of ultra-stable echelle spectrographs and the advent of 30-meter class telescopes on the…
Future direct-imaging exoplanet missions such as WFIRST/AFTA, Exo-C, and Exo-S will measure the reflectivity of exoplanets at visible wavelengths. The exoplanets to be observed will be located further away from their parent stars than is…
The spectrum of an exoplanet reveals the physical, chemical, and biological processes that have shaped its history and govern its future. However, observations of exoplanet spectra are complicated by the overwhelming glare of their host…
In-depth studies of exoplanetary atmospheres are starting to become reality. In order to unveil their properties in detail, we need spectra with a higher S/N and also more sophisticated analysis methods. With high-resolution spectrographs,…
The occurrence of a planet transiting in front of its host star offers the opportunity to observe the planet's atmosphere filtering starlight. The fraction of occulted stellar flux is roughly proportional to the optically thick area of the…
We provide an analytical description of the line broadening of HI absorbers in the Lyman-alpha forest resulting from Doppler broadening and Jeans smoothing. We demonstrate that our relation captures the dependence of the line-width on…