Related papers: Results from a set of three-dimensional numerical …
The vertical mixing in hot Jupiter atmospheres plays a critical role in the formation and spacial distribution of cloud particles in their atmospheres. This affects the observed spectra of a planet through cloud opacity, which can be…
We investigate the interaction between the magnetized stellar wind plasma and the partially ionized hydrodynamic hydrogen outflow from the escaping upper atmosphere of non- or weakly magnetized hot Jupiters. We use the well-studied hot…
Hot Jupiters are tidally-locked Jupiter-sized planets close to their host star. They have equilibrium temperatures above about 1000 K. Photometric observations find that the hotspot, the hottest location in the atmosphere, is shifted with…
(Abridged) The upper atmospheres of close-in gas giant exoplanets are subjected to intense heating/tidal forces from their parent stars. Atomic/ionized hydrogen (H) layers are sufficiently rarefied that magnetic pressure may dominate gas…
The ion temperature of the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn was observed to increase substantially from about 10 to 30 planet radii. Different heating mechanisms have been proposed to explain such observations, including a heating model…
The discovery of high incidence of hot Jupiters in dense clusters challenges the field-based hot Jupiter formation theory. In dense clusters, interactions between planetary systems and flyby stars are relatively common. This has a…
The nature and structure of the observed east-west flows on Jupiter and Saturn has been one of the longest-lasting mysteries in planetary science. This mystery has been recently unraveled due to the accurate gravity measurements provided by…
We present three-dimensional atmospheric circulation models of GJ 1214b, a 2.7 Earth-radius, 6.5 Earth-mass super Earth detected by the MEarth survey. Here we explore the planet's circulation as a function of atmospheric metallicity and…
Results from the laboratory experiments on the evolution of baroclinically unstable flows generated in a rotating tank with topographic beta-effect are presented. We study zonal jets of alternating direction which occur in these flows. The…
We present significant differences in the simulated atmospheric flow for warm, tidally-locked small Neptunes and super Earths (based on a nominal GJ 1214b) when solving the simplified, and commonly used, primitive dynamical equations or the…
Jupiter's deep abundances help to constrain the formation history of the planet and the environment of the protoplanetary nebula. Juno recently measured Jupiter's deep oxygen abundance near the equator to be 2.2$_{-2.1}^{+3.9}$ times the…
The full-phase infrared light curves of low-eccentricity hot Jupiters show a trend of increasing dayside-to-nightside brightness temperature difference with increasing equilibrium temperature. Here we present a three-dimensional model that…
The regimes of possible global atmospheric circulation patterns in an Earth-like atmosphere are explored using a simplified GCM based on the University of Hamburg's Portable University Model for the Atmosphere with simplified (linear)…
We explore the infrared spectrum of a three-dimensional dynamical model of planet HD209458b as a function of orbital phase. The dynamical model predicts day-side atmospheric pressure-temperature profiles that are much more isothermal at…
The characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres has come of age in the last decade, as astronomical techniques now allow for albedos, chemical abundances, temperature profiles and maps, rotation periods and even wind speeds to be measured.…
Giant exoplanets orbiting very close to their parent star (hot Jupiters) are subject to tidal forces expected to synchronize their rotational and orbital periods on short timescales (tidal locking). However, spin rotation has never been…
Jupiter's atmosphere features a variety of clouds that are formed from the interplay of chemistry and atmospheric dynamics, from the deep red color of the Great Red Spot to the high altitude white ammonia clouds present in the zones (bright…
Two decades after the discovery of 51 Peg b, the formation processes and atmospheres of short-period gas giants remain poorly understood. Observations of eccentric systems provide key insights on those topics as they can illuminate how a…
Observations of ultra-hot Jupiters offer an unprecedented opportunity to study the physics of some of the most extreme planetary atmospheres known. With exceedingly high amounts of irradiation blasting their upper atmospheres, ultra-hot…
In contrast to the Earth, where frictional heating is typically negligible, we show that drag mechanisms could act as an important heat source in the strongly-forced atmospheres of some exoplanets, with the potential to alter the…